


A Man Who Can Ruin A Party

by elisekc



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: #and stuff, Activism, Enjolras is super pretentious, F/M, M/M, Minor Violence, University/College, and kind of dumb, basic modern au, little bit of fluff I think, lots of paris, minor/moderate injury, nothing graphic dw, the classic one-sided pining!Graintaire thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 08:36:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5157221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisekc/pseuds/elisekc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"No. Absolutely not. You're not walking all the way to your place on your own, not at this time of night. Love Paris all you like, the fact is not everyone is as friendly as I am on those streets."<br/>"Then what do you suggest?" Enjolras snapped.<br/>"My house is not far from here. Stay with me."<br/>"Thank you, Grantaire, but I think I'd rather take my chances on the streets," Enjolras replied harshly, throwing on his coat and heading for the door. </p><p>This was written around the time of all the the disturbances in Paris last year - the demonstrations in the news and stuff got us all in a 'French activism' mindset and at the same sort of time Amber was bugging me to write ExR so this happened. It's kind of old so it might not be my best writing, and idk what I was reading at the time but there's a slightly old-timey tone to some of it that isn't quite my usual style. Anyway, I thought I'd publish - and it's my first fic so be gentle with me :P</p><p>Edit: I just spent two hours fixing the non-functional paragraph breaks only for it to not work... so sorry, you'll have to just put up with the formatting, I've tried everything!</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Man Who Can Ruin A Party

The Latin Quarter was not exactly the same Bohemian artist’s haven it had once been, not the sort of place with dancers on every corner and androgynous women smoking long cigarettes and dimly-lit socialist bars and homeless painters wandering the streets with easels under their arms; but it had not lost this completely. True, it had become gentrified somewhat since it gained its reputation as ‘a studenty place’, but, as it was indeed a very studenty place with lots of students, there was a feel to it that was a little quirky and unconventional the way so many modern teenagers tried to be. Intrepid young people flocking to a place always make that place a touch more Bohemian. Around the campus of the Université Paris Diderot there were a lot of Americans, because there was an American college outpost down the road. For this reason - and also financial ones - most of the UPD students preferred to live and socialise a little further afield.  
Enjolras had a bit of money. He rented a flat on Damesme Street, with his friend Combeferre, medical student and old classmate from their school days. Every afternoon they would walk around the corner to take the Metro from Tolbiac to Ledru-Rollin, which was just around the corner from the hospital where Combeferre and his old dorm-mate Joly - another med student - worked on weekends. Unpaid, of course, which they never ceased to remind everyone. Just a few doors down from the garden at Square Louis Majorelle was a bar; at least, it was a bar in the evenings, and a cafe in the daytime, with a front and back room each adapted to serve as one or the other. The bar was called Musain. It was not particularly popular, so when Enjolras and the medical students and the rest of the group that seemed to have formed around him gathered here, they were almost the only ones. Enjolras could walk into Musain at any time of day or night and there would always be someone he knew there; at seven in the morning on a Sunday, he could find a sleepy-eyed, chestnut-haired Joly sleepily clutching a double-shot espresso in newly washed scrubs, and at 2am on a Friday night he could find a drunken Grantaire singing on the tables with Courfeyrac like Merry and Pippin in the Green Dragon. Not much of a drinker himself, Enjolras preferred the daytime crowd to the late-night crowd - evenings, however, were the most pleasant; almost the whole crowd were there almost every night. Most would take dodgy bar snacks by way of a meal, and otherwise make do with a liquid supper.  
That evening Enjolras and Combeferre arrived late; Enjolras had had an essay to write, and originally thought it would take all night, so advised his friend to go without him. But then he’d got into one of his written rants and the whole paper was finished - if somewhat aggressively - in an hour and a half, and he managed to catch Combeferre just as he was putting on his coat to leave. Combeferre had a sensible coat; he was quite a sensible man, and Enjolras had always thought he would make a very good teacher. He had that sort of disposition, and enough enthusiasm for learning. He looked the part as well, with slightly a scatty muss to his hair, and glasses that were a little too big for his eyes, magnifying the grey irises and thick lashes to dramatic proportions. Enjolras was less sensible than Combeferre, and so was his coat; that being said, he was not exactly the artistic type, so it was not particularly creative. An ordinary, coat-shaped coat made of coat material. But he liked to make a statement. So it was scarlet.  
“Look who’s late!” Courfeyrac greeted them loudly as they came into Musain; the bar was dimly lit with a warm, indigo light, as well as with candles in red shades on the tables. Courfeyrac, six feet and three inches of concentrated good spirits - both the abstract trait of good spirit and the sort of good spirit that vodka was - was a dark-haired, well-dressed young man with a spark of abandon in his hazel eyes, and a smile that professed an unexpected amount of honour and goodness. He was the kind of man you would guess was a ‘bad influence’, but in reality, was as genuine and chivalrous as you could ask for a man to be. An old-fashioned sort in new-fashioned clothes.  
“Look who’s drunk!” Combeferre replied.  
Courfeyrac clapped a hand on his shoulder and dragged him on inside. “Well, if God really is always watching, I might as well be good entertainment. Now, on a scale of one to ten, how much debt are you in? And if it’s less than a seven, can you buy me a drink?”  
On a table close to where Bahorel and Joly were playing a competitive game of pool, Legle, Jehan and Feuilly were sitting talking. Eponine was sitting at the bar, laughing eagerly at Marius’s jokes. Enjolras found a place to lean that was somewhat near to everyone and listened for a conversation to join.  
“I’m not sure entirely what happened, but this morning I got out some of that vitamin-fortified juice and found that the carton was half-full of vodka,” Joly was saying over his shoulder to someone, while Bahorel mimed beating him over the head with his pool cue. The pair looked very alike, with chestnut-coloured hair and faint freckles, but Bahorel was twice the size of little Joly and more of a mess.  
“She sent me pictures of her cat, and I know I should have been hoping for slightly more intimate pictures, but I could hardly be disappointed,” Marius was telling Eponine. “It was a beautiful cat.”  
Jehan was saying to Feuilly, “Long story short, I actually managed to cry my way out of a mid-term assessment.”  
Joly was saying to Combeferre, “Of course I’ve been revising for the test. I could analyse the contents of my stomach right off the top of my head right now: 80% coffee, 5% hydrochloric acid, 5% anxiety pills and 5% my own tears. Prognosis: I’m fucked.”  
Courfeyrac came to lean next to Enjolras. “And how are you this fine evening?” He asked. “I notice you were late. That’s a new one. I don’t know what to do with myself if I get here and there are no heated ethical debates about the oppressive nature of capitalism already going on.”  
“Well I’m sorry to disappoint, but I had an essay to write on the oppressive nature of capitalism.”  
Courfeyrac sighed. “Ah, to be studying something you actually liked. Not that I condone your choice of course, though; you know, we would have set up camp in that nice bar by the campus if you hadn’t got us thrown out by arguing about business ethics with the bartender.”  
“That waitress was old enough to be paid over-21’s minimum wage and you know it, Courfeyrac. A person can’t just stand there and let a working woman be exploited by a small business owner who feels no obligation to comply to the law because he isn’t professionally externally inspected.”  
“Your heroism is inspiring, Enjolras, but I don’t think any of us would mind if you kept your trap shut just once in a while.”  
“There is never any occasion where you shouldn’t speak up. Where’s Combeferre?”  
“He’s over with Jehan and the others.”  
“Enjolras!” Legle greeted him cheerfully as he approached. “There you are! Have the rest of my wine. You need to explain feminism to Bahorel again.”  
“I think he means well, but the patriarchy is too ingrained into his dumb-ass skull for the concept to sink in,” Jehan added jokingly. Jehan was a rather small, mousy-haired man with an innocent expression inherent on his features; luckily he was just as sweet and gentle as his looks suggested, or that might have been a little embarrassing.  
Enjolras took a seat that had somehow been placed perfectly for him opposite the others, so he looked rather like a headmaster addressing three young pupils. “Gentlemen, trying to explain the entirety of feminism is going to take more time than we have,” he stated. “I’ll put it this way; a woman is a person, yes?”  
“Of course.”  
“And what else is a woman?”  
“Well, she is…” Bahorel began.  
“No,” Enjolras cut him off immediately. “Nothing else. A woman is a person; that’s it. That’s all a woman is. A person.”  
“But - ”  
“No. That’s it. Woman has no other traits that make them a woman. They just are one.”  
“Well, it’s a nice idea, but surely, simply biologically - ”  
“Oh, no, don’t get him started on biological sex vs the concept of gender,” Legle warned with a laugh. “Accept it and move on.”  
“I talked to somebody who knew this place today,” Jehan said suddenly. “This bar. Knew of it, anyway. They described it as ‘the place by the Square Louis Majorelle with all the intimidating socialists.’ I think that’s one to be proud of, eh?”  
“I’ll drink to that,” Enjolras agreed with a small smile, and everyone clinked their bottles and glasses together and drank.  
Eponine came to join them, and spent some time amusing everyone with her tales from the streets; she was not a student - she worked in a rather grotty all-night corner shop, and this allowed her to collect stories that could reduce grown men to tears of laughter. She spoke with a coarse enough accent that some of her tales came out garbled, and her subject matter was equally coarse; she didn’t censor a thing, Eponine. She was a dark-haired, dark-skinned, skinny, freckly young girl with a single dimple when she smiled, as well as a missing canine. A bit of a mess, but pretty despite it.  
Joly and Courfeyrac drifted away to play cards on the other side of the room. Enjolras listened and spoke, depending on the topic; Eponine’s stories disinterested him, but the rest of the group bought the topic back around to sociology and politics more often than most groups of friends did, and in such topics Enjolras was the reigning king. He hardly recognised it, but he was a definite leader to the group; the role simply fitted him so well he didn’t even notice it was his. It seemed natural, to him, that people looked at him to resolve debates, to explain things, to make plans and finalise decisions. He wasn’t the founder - that title belonged to Courfeyrac, who had the kind of brash, playful charisma that attracted friends easily and held them together. Enjolras was charismatic too - maybe more so - but in such a way that was not immediately magnetic. Courfeyrac was the lamp that attracted the flies, and Enjolras the net that caught them as soon as they were close enough.  
Feuilly had now been playing Marius at pool for some time, but the game came to a swift end; Enjolras had noticed the scene becoming more drunken and rowdy behind him, and when he turned, he turned to see Grantaire standing on the pool table, singing a song from a musical in an awful voice that might have more suited early eighties garage punks. The guitar that hung, stringless and decorative, from the ceiling beam had found its way into his hands; he was moving his hands as if to play it, and Enjolras wondered if he noticed it had no strings. He was vaguely disdainful of the whole sorry scene; Grantaire’s drunken singing was an awful affair, and there was no way of knowing if it was similarly awful sober because Enjolras had rarely ever seen him sober. Well, the man knows how to put on a show, at least, he thought derisively, and turned back to the others.  
“Oh, Grantaire,” Legle laughed fondly. “What a guy.”  
“Where did he come from in the first place?” Enjolras asked with a slight frown. “How did a man like him end up here with us?”  
“Jolras, don’t be mean,” Jehan elbowed him gently. “Grantaire is… different from us, I’ll give you that, but he’s a fun guy. If you listen to him, he’s actually very witty. And he’s an artist,” Jehan added, as if that automatically made him a model citizen. Jehan liked art.  
“He’s on Courfeyrac’s business course,” Combeferre said in answer to Enjolras’ question. “That’s why he’s here. The two of them get along pretty well, I think.”  
“Yeah, because they both chose business as a doss course so they could spend their entire student life drinking and sleeping with hot photography students,” Feuilly joked.  
“Honestly, haven’t you ever spoken to him?” Jehan reprimanded Enjolras gently.  
"In passing, when I couldn't avoid it," Enjolras replied. "If he talks to me. I can hardly ignore him."  
"Honestly, I wouldn't put that past you, in Grantaire's case," Combeferre said. "He kind of represents everything you're against."  
Enjolras briefly looked back at Grantaire; he'd switched things around now, singing an angry Flight of the Conchords song in a wildly inappropriate dramatic falsetto.  
"How do you mean?" Jehan asked Combeferre.  
"Well, they're opposites, aren't they?" Combeferre replied. "Enjolras is passionate and Grantaire is cynical. Enjolras is concerned with every worldly issue, Grantaire doesn't care about anything. Enjolras likes to learn, Grantaire is just at uni for the parties. Enjolras is logical, Grantaire is creative. Enjolras has never even winked at a person, Grantaire hooks up with anyone who'll have him."  
"Enjolras is a cat person and Grantaire is a dog person," Eponine put in.  
"Of all the grand differences, Eponine, you focus on choice of pet?"  
"It's very telling," she insisted.  
"The only reason Grantaire even talks to Enjolras is because he has a crush on him," Bahorel said, as if that were case closed. “There’s not much they could talk about in reality. He’d be ignoring Enjolras right back otherwise.”  
At that moment there was a curious sound of mixed cacophony and melody; Grantaire had sat down at the piano and begun to attempt to play. It might have been Tom Odell. The speakers shouted their agreement over it as Courfeyrac sat on the piano and sang along to a completely different song.  
“Well, I don’t think it’s the only reason,” Jehan added fairly.  
Enjolras was mortified. "It’s no reason at all!" He protested. "Grantaire is... He... He's an idiot!"  
It was probably the worst-crafted counter-argument he'd made in his life. In fact, Grantaire being an idiot was probably more of an argument for than against his being interested in Enjolras. You'd have to be an idiot to go and do something like that.  
"An idiot in looovve," sang Legle.  
"Alright, that's enough," Jehan said fondly, but not without a small smile of his own. "Enjolras is right; Grantaire is not exactly the long-term crush-getting type. Maybe he just likes Enjolras' ideas."  
"Or maybe he's just a part of this group like the rest of us and he wants to be sociable," Combeferre reasoned.  
"Or maybe he'll talk to anyone if he's drunk," Feuilly joked.  
"I feel more inclined to agree with the latter," Enjolras said. "But who can say why that man does anything? He is a mystery to me."  
"Who's a mystery?" Asked a voice from behind. Enjolras turned; Courfeyrac had returned, and Grantaire had come with him. He held a half-empty bottle in one hand and his own balled-up tie in the other. The guitar had somehow returned to its nail on the ceiling beam.  
“Good evening, Monsieur Enjolras,” Grantaire said loudly. “Why so late today?”  
“Schoolwork,” Combeferre told him when Enjolras didn’t reply.  
“Oh, that. Well, I suppose that would do it. May I sit? Come on, budge up. Oop - ” He made to sit across the arms of Enjolras and Combeferre’s chairs, but missed and ended up sitting on Enjolras’ lap, sideways with his legs across the arms and his feet on Combeferre.  
Enjolras was so surprised that for once he was lost for words. The others were mixed in their reactions; most laughed, a couple just looked nervous, as if they were worried Enjolras would snap and break Grantaire’s arm off.  
“Oh, well,” said Grantaire, looking momentarily confused. “Hello, there. How very unexpected.” He looked around himself as if to get his bearings, inspecting his seat. “Where did you get these Jeans? They’re very soft.”  
“Grantaire,” Enjolras snapped through gritted teeth, “would you get off me?”  
“Mm, right, yes, yes… Where are my feet?”  
Combeferre lifted them off his own lap with a reluctant grin; Grantaire’s good humour was infectious. “Here.”  
“Ah-ha, there they are! Excuse me, Monsieur Enjolras…” he levered himself upright and, once he regained his footing on the floor, spread his arms proudly as if expecting applause for being able to stand. Then he leaned on the back of Enjolras’ chair to join in with the conversation as if nothing had happened.  
To look at, Enjolras and Grantaire were like two sides of the same coin - a coin which had possibly been dropped with one side down in the mud for several years. Combeferre had called them opposites; visually, this was certainly true in a lot of ways. Enjolras had - to coin an overused phrase he would no doubt hate - the face of an angel; he was blonde and classically beautiful, with striking blue eyes, well-sculpted features and delicate pale skin. He had a timeless, ageless face, almost bordering on androgyny, but hardened by a stubborn jaw and a proud curve to his brow. He wasn’t a big, strong, scary looking guy, but few would lay a finger on him - partly because there was something slightly sacred about him, as if to touch him would be a crime in the eyes of God, and partly because there was a set to his lips and a wildness in his eyes that could be surprisingly terrifying.  
Grantaire also rather put people off laying a finger on him, but more out of a concern as to where he’d been; he would be unbothered and unsullied by the touch of anyone - welcomed it, even - but to touch him may sully the toucher. He had an air about him of having just rolled out of a stranger’s bed and come straight back to the bar. His hair was very black and slightly wiry, and his skin - where Enjolras’ was almost translucently delicate and looked like it rarely saw the light of day - was tanned and weathered enough by scorching UV to bring out Joly’s Concerned Medicine Face. He wasn’t exceptionally good looking, but he had a self-confidence in his appearance - whether genuine or forced, the effect was the same - that made him seem more attractive. His eyes were brown and twinkled with a jaded kind of amusement.  
The two men were just similar-looking enough to bring a kind of harmony to their appearance together; they had almost exactly the same haircut, a mass of loose curls, and something similar in the shape of their faces and the cut of their jaws. They both cared very little about the way they looked, as well; in Enjolras’ case, this was because he had no space in his mind or his life for trivial things like aesthetics. Grantaire was an artist, so he had plenty of care for aesthetics; he simply didn’t have the time, the money or the inclination to look smart himself. Their disregard for their dress resulted in a very similar look to their clothes. Needless to say, Enjolras overlooked all these similarities, finding only differences to scorn.  
Enjolras had rarely stayed at Musain as late as he had tonight; usually, he missed the worst of the drunkenness, or at least was too engrossed in other matters to notice. Tonight, he felt, might quickly get too ridiculous for him. At length, he stood up.  
“Combeferre, I’m going home,” he stated. “Are you coming?”  
Combeferre checked his watch and sighed as everyone looked up at Enjolras in disappointment. “I probably should. I have a test tomorrow.”  
“So do I,” said Grantaire.  
“And you’re planning to sit it hung over, are you?”  
“No, of course not! I’m planning to keep drinking and sit it drunk.”  
“Well, I don’t plan on sitting in a lecture with less than four hours’ sleep,” Enjolras said. “So let’s leave now. Quickly.”  
As he left, he could just hear Grantaire saying to the others, “A fine man, don’t you think, boys?”

Grantaire rather hated to see him go, but at least he had the pleasing view from behind as consolation. Oh, Enjolras. What an asshole. What a pretentious douche. What a perfect, stupid, wonderful little shit. How had poor Grantaire ended up adhering to a man this naive? It was just his luck.  
The first party of the year was where he had first seen him. There seemed to be some sort of a stir occurring in the corner of the room; a group of people all gathered around a blonde man perched on a elevated seat, setting him above the others. Someone behind Grantaire had said to him, “There’s a man who can ruin a party.”  
That had got his interest. What sort of shocking story was the man telling? What kind of depravity was he was spreading that could ruin a party? What gossip did he have to share? What gruesome tales could he tell? ‘A man who can ruin a party’ was a phrase often applied to Grantaire himself. ‘A man who can ruin a party’ was a man Grantaire would buy a drink for any day.  
He slowly approached until he was within hearing distance of the man, expecting to hear profanities and scandals. What he heard was the opposite.  
“It is not up to other people,” he was saying a strong, confident voice. “It is not up to those above us. It is not up to the grown ups. It’s up to us. We, the young people - we, the heirs to France. Our people have a history of protest, of campaign, of fighting for freedom; when did we stop fighting? It was not in the 1850s. People young enough to be our grandparents, our parents, our aunts and uncles, fought against war with flowers in the seventies. Seventy years ago students right here protested for socio-political reforms on sexuality, art, education, wages - the last French Revolution was in 1968. What have we been doing since then? Have we given up our passion? Are we content with what relative good conditions we have here, now? Is France truly content to be merely acceptable? A socialist government does not create a socialist population. Where is our Wendy Davis? Where are our Ferguson protesters? You cannot say there is no racism in France. You cannot say France has no sexism. You cannot say the poor are looked after by the rich in France. People are still hurt here, still killed here, because of our imperfections as a society. None of us have reason to remain silent. None of us have any excuse not to speak up. We must start by fixing our own views, our own ways of life; then we must spread this, through education, through example, until everyone in France knows that everyone else bleeds when cut just like them, regardless of divisions. We are a great people - we should strive to be a good people, also.”  
Grantaire had been so blindsided by the speech he had simply stood and listened from a distance, and found himself afterwards unable to approach the man or the group he had formed. What a different man he was to Grantaire’s expectations! He’d expected a mongrel and found a foxhound. He had walked in through the wrong door and found himself in the Palais de l'Élysée instead of the smoky speakeasy. He’d bought tickets for a kitchen sink comedy and watched an epic historical drama. This idiot was not his kind of idiot at all; it was a whole new genre of idiot, a naive, passionate, dignified kind of idiot, with a magnetism that could adhere steel cutlery to his skin.  
“Courfeyrac, who is this fantastical idiot?” He had asked Courfeyrac, who was hosting the party.  
“He isn’t an idiot, idiot,” Courfeyrac had said. “That’s Enjolras, and he’s a genius.”  
“He’s an idiot,” Grantaire said. “But he’s an impressive idiot, I’ll give him that. Where’s he come from?”  
“He lives with Combeferre on Demesme Street. He’s the man in charge of my Amis at Musain, the bar near the hospital.”  
In charge, was he?  
Grantaire had been at Musain almost every night since. He simply had to see more of this man, and so he had: more, and more, and more. He'd got to the point where, if Enjolras wasn't around, it felt like a part of Grantaire was missing. He was himself when Enjolras was there. Not that Enjolras ever spent any time with him; his existence and presence was all Grantaire needed to feel happy. He liked to bask in his glow.  
"A fine man, don't you think, boys?" He said to the table at large as Enjolras left.  
"A modern icon," agreed Feuilly. "With a bright future."  
"Unlike the rest of us ordinary men," Bahorel said, raising his glass for a toast.  
"To being ordinary," Jehan said.  
"Being ordinary," the others echoed, and drank.  
"Grantaire, I still don't understand why you think Enjolras is so great," Courfeyrac said. "You have nothing in common, you think he's an idiot, and to be honest, he's kind of a dick to you."  
"Grantaire, are you a little in love with Enjolras?" Bahorel added with mock seriousness. It was no secret that Grantaire worshipped Enjolras.  
"No more than everyone else," Grantaire replied fairly. "I mean, be honest here; isn't everyone a little in love with Enjolras?"  
There was a murmur of grudging agreement.  
Grantaire folded his arms on the table and rested his face in them. "Who's party is this again?" He asked in a muffled voice. "Who's house am I in?"  
"This is a bar, Grantaire," Jehan reminded him gently.  
"Do you think he'll mind if I sleep here tonight?" Grantaire continued as if he hadn't spoken, and closed his eyes. 

The campus at UPD was based around a central square of open lawn; it was winter but still warm enough for students to be sitting there. Behind the lawn, the modern, checkerboard main building dominated the square; a few hundred metres away, the River Seine slipped by. Enjolras had woken up acceptably early that day, with sunlight streaming in through thin white curtains, then gathered his things and walked into school. He strode along the grass towards the building, intending to find a book in the library before his lecture; around him cyclists were locking their bikes to railings, and young Parisians sat on the ground in circles to discuss the day.  
He stopped to get a coffee from a stand and just as he was about to continue on, Enjolras heard someone call his name and looked around. Sitting with a pile of books laid out in front of him on the lawn was Combeferre.  
“I was going to wake you this morning, but I felt bad,” he said as Enjolras approached. “I let you sleep in.”  
“Thanks. Are you studying for the test?”  
“I’m trying.”  
“These are all your books? I don’t understand how you can study medicine. You’re a machine.”  
“They’re not all mine,” Combeferre said.  
“No? I thought Joly preferred to study locked in a dark, quiet room.”  
“You’re right. He’s still at home.”  
“Well who else has a test today?”  
“I do,” said a voice behind him, and a figure passed by him, sat down on the grass opposite Combeferre, set down a cup of water and pulled an open folder onto his lap. Wearing an oversized jumper and battered glasses which Enjolras had never seen before, it was Grantaire.  
“I bumped into him at the coffee stand,” Combeferre explained, with a slightly apologetic note, as if it were his responsibility to ensure these two never had to socialise. “Apparently, you need more books than you might expect to study business.”  
There was a graph of some sort on the folder page Grantaire was looking at. He had his chin propped on his hand and was staring at it with vague disinterest. After a moment he sighed, shook his head in an ‘I’m lost’ sort of way and snapped the folder shut, exchanging it for a different book.  
“Do you even like studying business?” Combeferre asked him.  
“No,” Grantaire replied frankly. “But if I don’t at least scrape a pass, maman will worry.”  
“Are you sober?” Enjolras asked suddenly; it wasn’t like him to speak without thinking, but a decent surprise could do it.  
Grantaire looked up at him and raised an eyebrow. “As appealing as the idea is, Enjolras, it isn’t physically possible for a man to stay blind drunk for forty-eight consecutive hours on a regular basis without eventually dying. Right, doctor?” He added to Combeferre. His voice sounded very different when he wasn’t announcing all his words with dramatic vigour and volume; it got Enjolras thinking whether he had actually ever seen Grantaire sober. He supposed he must have, but never in close quarters. Only as part of the group, where he didn’t notice him.  
“I should probably know that, but I don’t,” Combeferre replied.  
Grantaire shrugged one shoulder. “I passed out. You can’t keep drinking if you’re unconscious, so I just decided to deal with the hangover and maybe read a book or two before the test.” To punctuate his point he dropped a dissolving tablet into his cup of water, where it fizzed dramatically. “What are you doing still standing up? Sit down, join the cramming.”  
Enjolras paused for a few moments before sitting down carefully on the grass, checking it wasn’t damp before putting any weight on his new (apparently soft) Jeans.  
“What are you studying?” Grantaire asked, taking a sip of his water without looking up from his book. “Something pretentious?”  
Enjolras was still too shocked by the picture of Grantaire as an ordinary, quiet student to reply for a moment. “Socio-Political Philosophy.”  
“You could have just said ‘yes’,” Grantaire replied in a distant tone, eyes on a block of text. “Oh, screw this,” he added, closing the book. “I don’t care about the labour reforms of 1957.”  
“The labour reforms were a fascinating milestone in history,” Enjolras protested incredulously. “The effect they had on the working woman, on the minimum wage workers…”  
“Yes, I know, I’m a business student,” Grantaire said boredly. “I’m taught that better labour conditions mean lower profit margins, and that’s what I write on the exam and I get a happy little tick beside it. That’s all that matters.”  
“But - ”  
“Please, Jolras, don’t even try with me today,” Grantaire sighed, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Endearing as it is, I’m not in mood to be converted.”  
Enjolras had actually been about to say something like ‘but I thought you didn’t learn anything here.’ His idea of a ‘doss course’ student, coming to uni for the sake of it, may have been a little more extreme than the reality. Grantaire did, apparently, turn up to classes. Enjolras did not clarify this, however; he was too surprised by Grantaire's words to continue speaking. He'd used his nickname - which was unusual from him but often done by the others - and called him endearing. Endearing was not a word Enjolras had ever heard applied to him.  
He checked the time, then patted in his pocket for his student ID so he could go and get his book out. Nothing. He checked his other pocket. His wallet. His bag. Not there.  
Grantaire was looking at him. "Alright there?" He asked.  
Enjolras ignored him and said to Combeferre, "'Ferre, will you do me a favour?"  
"Absolutely not," Combeferre replied. "I'm revising, leave me alone."  
"What about me?" Grantaire jumped at the chance. "I'm not revising. What's up?"  
Enjolras sighed inwardly. "I don't have my student ID and I need to check a book out."  
"I'm on it," Grantaire said, standing up and brushing down his torn and dirty Jehans. "What's the book?"  
"Don't be ridiculous, just give me your card and I'll go."  
"No, no, I can manage. I need an excuse not to revise. Tell me the title."  
Enjolras was almost tempted to give up on getting the book - he shouldn't let people do stuff for him and take advantage - but instead he wrote the title and author on a scrap of paper and handed it reluctantly to Grantaire. Grantaire took it and departed with a wink.  
"How strange," Enjolras commented as he left.  
"What's strange?"  
"Him. Crossing the campus to get me a book. Calling me Jolras."  
"A lot of people call you that."  
"Not a lot of people run errands for me."  
"Well I'm hardly surprised. He thinks the sun shines out of your arse."  
"Really? Hm." Enjolras was only vaguely surprised. Grantaire had, after all, always shown him affection disproportional to Enjolras' treatment of him. He wondered, not for the first time, exactly what he had done, or said, or had about him to draw in a man like Grantaire. He certainly hadn’t tried to; in fact he had made every effort to put him off. He was never keen on having Grantaire around.  
Enjolras checked his watch. “Mm. I’m gonna have to go now, or I won’t get my seat. You can take the book back home for me when he gets back.”  
“Oh, come on, you can’t wait for two more minutes and sit somewhere else? Just to thank him.”  
“You can thank him for me.” He stood up and lifted his bag, ready to go.  
He didn’t manage to get away that easily. Almost at the door of the lecture building, someone called his name from behind and Grantaire caught up with him.  
“Where do you think you’re going?” He said cheerfully, holding out the book for him. His face was flushed as if he’d run to catch up. “Any other jobs for today, sir?” He added cheekily.  
“Thank you, Grantaire,” Enjolras said, ignoring the jibe. Feeling a slight stab of pity and guilt, he added, “...You didn’t have to do that.”  
“Any time, my friend,” Grantaire replied with a smile. “Wish me luck for my test, now.”  
“Good luck.”

Enjolras was still sorting his notes with a folder tucked under one arm when he arrived at Musain. He was certainly not late today, but it was not a busy day for most of the others, and a large proportion of them were here already.  
Almost the moment Enjolras entered, Marius was there; Marius was a fairly good-looking, brown-haired, freckly young man with particularly green eyes. “You’ve been in school since you woke up this morning, haven’t you, Enjolras?” He asked.  
“I have.”  
“Then I suppose you haven’t had the chance to read the paper.” He handed him a copy of their favourite left-wing rag. “The hostage crisis is over. The police shot the perpetrator and twenty odd hostages out of the twenty-five survived and walked away.”  
“Hmm.” Enjolras skimmed the front page article. “Good news, I suppose.”  
“This is only the beginning, of course.”  
“Of course.”  
Enjolras looked up; the rest of the gathered Amis were all around a few pushed together tables. They were laughing about something.  
“Driving?!” Eponine was laughing. “What’s that got to do with anything?!”  
“I know! Isn’t it ridiculous? You can build a hundred nuclear missiles, but god forbid you let a drag queen drive a Prius.”  
“To be honest, it could be very dangerous,” Bahorel said in a mock-serious tone. “Trans people might ‘accidentally’ crash into the Kremlin.”  
Everyone laughed.  
“It’s no laughing matter,” Enjolras said, and everyone went silent at his voice. “The bill is just the latest in a string of atrocities committed against the transgender community in Russia; it means they can’t work, they can’t go to school, they can barely live. Meanwhile, here in France,” he dropped the paper onto the table, “it’s issues of race and religion, and not gender, that will soon be coming to a head. And when they do, who’s side will we be on?”  
“The side of the underdogs, by any chance, Enjolras?” Eponine suggested jokingly.  
“The side of the innocent,” Enjolras said. “Who are, often, the underdogs. Today’s events have started something. I fear we will soon be fighting a very real fight.” That look had come into his eyes, the strange soldierly look that might make one think he’d already seen the war he was envisioning.  
“You can’t condemn the actions of the police,” Feuilly said. Everyone was looking at Enjolras.  
Enjolras thought about his next words carefully. “...The sacrifice made was tragic, but, in this context, understandable. In situations like this, the sacrifice of one madman to save the lives of twenty innocents is a necessary action. I’d even go so far as to say that, in this instance, the actions of the police were almost commendable, and things could have been a lot worse.”  
“But?” Courfeyrac prompted.  
“But,” Enjolras said, “The muslim population of Paris is in danger. We must ask ourselves, how many will suffer for the actions of so few? Compare the white Christian casualties to the Muslim casualties, the casualties of innocents on each side of this petty cold war; we, the West, have killed and injured thousands upon thousands more of ‘them’ than they have of ‘us’. When have white Christians had to collectively answer for the actions of the KKK, or the slavers?”  
In the silence, there was the sound of a cork being popped out of a bottle. Enjolras glared in the direction of the sound; Grantaire was sitting at the back with his feet on a table, bottle of wine in hand and cork rolling on the floor.  
“Sorry, do carry on,” he said with a wave of the hand.  
“Have you no respect for our suffering brothers and sisters?” Enjolras snapped at him.  
“I said I’m sorry,” Grantaire snapped back. “Please do continue, Monsieur.”  
“There’s nothing more to say,” Enjolras said. “But there are plans to be made. There’s going to be a rally outside the Palace, for the equality of all the people; when there’s a rally to express the voices of good, the voices of evil will no doubt make an appearance. If we’re going to be there, we have to accept that it may not be peaceful.”  
“Peacefully is always the best way to protest,” Combeferre said gently.  
“But it isn’t always a viable option,” Enjolras reminded him sharply. “If anyone here is not willing to face violence with violence, they shouldn’t be coming. It could be dangerous. Fighting will occur, and it might occur where we are. If that isn’t okay with you, find some other cause that’s less heated. Earthworm’s rights, perhaps.”  
There was silence. Grantaire looked around expectantly, as if sure someone would say they were not willing, but nobody did. Enjolras was triumphant. 

Busy making plans, Enjolras stayed at Musain, settling on crisps and olives for dinner. It was not even nearly enough to fill the stomach of a grown man, and he ended up grazing non-stop from about half five until midnight, eating with one hand and scribing with the other as everyone told him conflicting details and he attempted to make sense of it.  
“What about Grantaire?” Feuilly asked him at around ten.  
“What about him?” Enjolras replied, taking a handful of peanuts from a nearby bag.  
“Well, will he be coming?”  
“Of course not.”  
“Have you asked?”  
“I don’t need to. He won’t come.”  
“How do you know if you don’t ask?”  
“Fine. Ask him.”  
Feuilly looked over his shoulder. “Grantaire!”  
Grantaire looked around, from where he was standing on a table at the back of the room, for no apparent reason. “Feuilly!”  
“Do you want to come to the rally?”  
“Not particularly.”  
“Didn’t I tell you?” Said Enjolras.  
“You know, he would have said yes if you’d asked.”  
“I don’t want anyone coming just because I asked. I want you all to come because you want to. Grantaire doesn’t want to be there, so I don’t want him there. Hence, why I don’t ask.”  
“Feuilly?” Grantaire’s voice suddenly called.  
“Yes?”  
“Isn’t the day of the rally the day of the law ball? And aren’t half of your protester friends law students? That might be a bit tight on the timing, don’t you think?”  
“I think a party can be missed for the sake of The People, don’t you?” Enjolras said.  
“Eh,” Grantaire shrugged. “I don’t think The People will miss a couple of law students. Who’s going to hand out tickets on the door if Bossuet isn’t there?”  
Across the table Legle laughed at the very idea. He hadn’t turned up to a single lecture since October.  
“We might be able to make it in time,” Bahorel said.  
“Why do you want to go?” Legle said. “You hate law even more than I do.”  
“Have you seen the dress Camille is wearing to that ball? I’d rather not miss it if I can help it at all. I mean, I know, priorities, but if I can make it I’ll damn well go. And the rest of you, too,” Bahorel said. “Open bar.”  
“I feel like we’re getting a little off topic,” Enjolras said, but without any bitterness. There was hardly any more to be done now, anyway. He put down his pen and sat, reaching for his fourth bag of crisps.  
“How many of those have you had?” Joly asked.  
“Don’t start, Joly,” Legle said. “He’s fine. If you’re worrying about anything it should be how many bottles Grantaire has drunk.”  
“Relax,” Grantaire said. “I’ve only had half of three bottles of wine.”  
“Why did you open three bottles to only drink one and a half bottles’ worth of wine?” Courfeyrac asked.  
“I couldn’t decide which sort I wanted, so I bought one of each. Who likes rosé? I can’t stand it.”  
“Enjolras will have a little, I’m sure” said Courfeyrac, offering an empty glass to him to be filled.  
“A little is a good start,” Grantaire said as he poured. “Perhaps next time you’ll move on to a lot. And then, perhaps, an unhealthy amount. Then you could contest me for the title of Alpha Drunk.”  
“No-one could contest you for that title,” Enjolras replied nastily, still bitter about the cork incident.  
“Enjolras,” Courfeyrac said, “you could be a touch nicer, you know.”  
“I don’t recall ‘nice’ being one of my presiding traits,” Enjolras said. He didn’t drink a lot, and whenever he did have a little, he retained his propensity for flowery language, as well as his ability to text.  
“Well, it’s possible to learn many exciting new things in a lifetime,” Courfeyrac said. “C’mon, mate,” he added in a lower voice, “he may not be your favourite type of person, but he’s a good guy. He’s fun. If you ask me, ‘fun’ is something you could do with learning a bit about.”  
“‘Fun’ never won any battles.”  
“Neither did ‘pretentious asshole’,” Courfeyrac replied frankly. “There’s no battles to be won right now, Jolras; relax. You’ve done all the duty you can tonight.”  
Enjolras was only half-listening; he could hear his name being mentioned at a table in the corner, where Grantaire was standing behind the chairs of Eponine and Combeferre.  
“It’s not any insult to you, of course,” one of them - Enjolras could not distinguish who was speaking - was saying. “I’m saying no-one has a chance. He just isn’t like that. He has bigger things on his mind.”  
“His only love is Lady Liberty,” Grantaire put in. “Justice is his sex, and the sweet milk of freedom is his wine. He is married to France - and you can’t contest that that is an intimate marriage, as he’s almost always in her - and the only marital aids in their bedroom are the handcuffs of democracy and the nine-inch strap-on of patriotism.”  
"I think that metaphor got away from you a little, Grantaire!"  
"What! Don't you know art when you hear it? I could be a poet."  
"Maybe he hasn't found the right person yet," Eponine said diplomatically.  
"Don't be that person, Ponine," Combeferre said. "Ace people don't need to find the right person."  
"Enjolras has found the right person," Grantaire said. "It is Lydia, the beautiful dark-haired cat on the corner of his street. Or perhaps it is the sweet-smelling, sensuous Madame Pizza."  
"Who says he's ace, though? Has he ever said so to you, Ferre?"  
"No, but I've known him forever. I'm as close to certain as possible. He's never been moved by anyone."  
"Being a twenty-year-old virgin who loves nobody but the People doesn't mean you must be ace."  
"Come on, Ponine," said Grantaire, "that's like saying 'making out with a hundred men doesn't mean you must be gay.'"  
"Grantaire, you've made out with a hundred men and you're not gay," Combeferre said.  
"Oh, yes, well, that was a bad example - "  
"No, it was a good one," Combeferre said. "You're right, Ponine; actions don't imply sexuality. The only labels you can assign a person are the ones they assign to themselves."

"I don't like it," Grantaire told Joly at about one o'clock, taking a pensive sip of whiskey. "He's crazy, I tell you. All this talk of 'necessary sacrifice' and 'one life for the sake of many.' It's madness. A man was killed today, and he calls that justice? He goes out looking for a fight! Whose life will be the next 'necessary sacrifice', eh? I'll tell you; his own!"  
"Grantaire, I've never heard you talk ethics before," said Joly, who had taken a power nap a few hours previously and had now returned ready for a two AM hospital shift.  
"I don't give a shit about ethics," Grantaire grumbled. "Ethics are an illusion of men who want to call themselves righteous. I'm talking about him; when that look comes into his eyes, I worry about him. Who’s gonna save him from himself? I tell you, if I hear any more talk about 'willing to face violence with violence' I'll call a psychiatrist for his own sake!"  
"Who are you to preach pacifism? You're a boxer and a fencer."  
"Sport," Grantaire said dismissively. "Besides, what's my life? It's nothing. The life of Enjolras - that's worth a hundred of mine."  
"Tell him that, I dare you."  
Grantaire chuckled into his glass. "Not on your life. Besides, he’d probably agree."  
Joly checked his watch. "I should be going soon."  
"No, really? What a shame. I suppose I should get off home too."  
"What about Enjolras?"  
Enjolras had not, as might have been assumed, gone home long since. He was curled in his chair, asleep, with his red coat thrown considerately over him. Not drunk, just tired.  
Grantaire went over and gently shook him. "Enjolras, hey. Wake up. You can't stay."  
"Hm?" He stirred. "Stay where?” He blinked his eyes open and took in the room hazily. “...What am I doing here?"  
"You fell asleep."  
"How?"  
"I don't know the precise physiology of it, Monsieur, but I think it might have something to do with staying late yesterday night, getting up early, and working non-stop all day and night today without a proper meal," Grantaire suggested. "Come on now, we're leaving; you can't stay."  
"Where's Combeferre? Did he leave without me?" His coat fell to the floor as he stood. Grantaire picked it up.  
"I'm not sure how to tell you this, Jolras, but Combeferre didn't exactly go home to his own bed tonight," Joly said with a wry smile. "Not that the gossip would interest you, of course."  
"No, spare me the details," Enjolras agreed with a curl of the lip. "That little traitor. The Metro can't still be running; now how do I get home?"  
"The short answer is: you don't," Grantaire said.  
Enjolras turned immediately to Joly. "Where are you going? You must have some way home. Can I stay tonight?"  
"I'm going to the hospital," Joly said. "If you want to come be my guest, but they generally don't allow people to just hang out in the wee hours."  
"What about me?" Grantaire said, for the second time in the last twenty four hours. "I'm walking home. It isn't far."  
"Good idea," Enjolras said.  
Grantaire blinked in surprise. "Really?"  
"Mm. I'll walk home. I don't have to be up early, I have time."  
Grantaire sighed. "No. Absolutely not. You're not walking all the way to your place on your own, not at this time of night. Love Paris all you like, the fact is not everyone is as friendly as I am on those streets."  
"Then what do you suggest?" Enjolras snapped.  
"My house is not far from here. Stay with me."  
"Thank you, Grantaire, but I think I'd rather take my chances on the streets," Enjolras replied harshly, throwing on his coat and heading for the door.  
"Enjolras!" Joly reprimanded weakly.  
Grantaire followed him to the door, Joly just behind. "Enjolras, don't be an idiot," Grantaire said. "I'm not trying anything, I swear. For your safety, stay with me."  
"He's right, Jolras, don't be unreasonable," Joly agreed.  
"I don't need your charity," Enjolras snapped.  
"Excuse me, Monsieur," the barman said. "You have unpaid for comestibles."  
"Yes?" Grantaire said. "I'm sorry, friend. I won't leave you unpaid. Monsieur Enjolras will pay for all our drinks tonight, and in return I will kindly let him stay at my house."  
Enjolras glared at him. "Now you've got me buying your drinks and following you home?"  
"You were the one complaining about charity; now it’s a transaction. Business. You can buy my drinks, or I can buy yours," Grantaire added evenly. "It makes no difference to me. Either way, there’s no point staying to calculate all our separate balances."  
Enjolras ground his teeth and said, "Put tonight on my bill, Monsieur."  
"Very good, Monsieur."  
"Why is it," Enjolras complained as they left the bar together, "that I have been unable to escape you these last few days? What have I done to deserve this?"  
"God pitied your dull, serious life of work and sent you a saviour," Grantaire replied as he caught up to him, unruffled. Joly peeled away towards the hospital.  
"Do you never get upset? Do you never feel? Does nothing move you?"  
"One thing does." Before Enjolras could enquire further he added, "Did you get all your plans sorted, then?"  
"Yes. It should go smoothly, seeing as you won't be there."  
"Indeed. I, meanwhile, will spend all day getting ready for this law ball, so I might get a decent chance at peeking under this remarkable dress of Camille's. Legle will return from the palace sweating and dirty, to find her in the arms of a sweeter smelling gentleman."  
"A gentleman who smells of beer, more like. You know, you weren't half so bad this morning; perhaps you should take up sobriety as a more common pastime."  
"And you weren’t half so bad a few nights ago when you were drinking Courfeyrac's drinks by accident; perhaps you should take up drinking as a more common pastime."  
"If you can't stand me sober, why are you even here?"  
"I can stand you in almost any state, Enjolras, but it's a case of you being able to stand me. You called me 'friend' over cards when you were drunk the other night."  
"I must have been very drunk."  
"Mm. ...You must be careful, you know," Grantaire said suddenly.  
"What? When?"  
"Always, I suppose, but I meant at this rally. Are you certain you wouldn't rather join me at the ball? We can wile away a whole day, I'm sure. For starters I have nothing to wear. We could shop."  
For a moment, Enjolras was lost for words. "Grantaire, are you mad? I cannot abandon the people for the sake of my safety - what about their safety? No, thank you, I don't think I will come shopping with you. My life is not an unwilling sacrifice. I will give it up if I have to, to protect others."  
"Then you're an idiot. Your life is vastly valuable and should not be given up lightly."  
"No more valuable than anyone else's. That's the principle of equality."  
Grantaire snorted. "Really, you believe that? You'd say my life is equal to yours? That I'm your equal?"  
Enjolras look surprised at his questions. "What? Yes, of course."  
Grantaire was equally taken aback by this answer, but as he was drunker he did a comical, physical double take. "Honestly?"  
"Yes. All humans are equal. I may not like some of them, but they are no less important than me. Your death would be as much a tragedy as mine, and I would be just as willing to defend your life with mine, as I would for anyone in need."  
"Would you really?" Grantaire said softly, sounding amazed.  
Enjolras looked a little disturbed by his tone. "...Yes. Of course."  
"Well, how about that."  
"I don't suppose I've won you over to the cause?" Enjolras asked hopefully.  
"No, Enjolras, I still think you're all overly optimistic about change, and under-ly considerate of your own happiness. But my cynicism doesn't make me respect the lot of you any less. You're good men."  
"You really think so?"  
"Of course."  
"I always got the impression you thought we were a bunch of idiots and madmen."  
"You are, but you're my idiots and madmen. Why else do you think I hang around at Musain every night? It costs me a fortune."  
"Does your living nearby have anything to do with it?"  
"A stroke of luck."  
"I have no idea where you live. Does everyone know you live so close to the bar?"  
Grantaire raised an eyebrow and said in a voice heavy with sarcasm, "No, Enjolras, none of my friends know where I live. I live three streets down from our regular hangout and nobody has ever come over. You are the first person all year to learn the secret. Be honoured."  
"Sorry, I forget..."  
"You forget that I'm a part of your little boy's club? Perhaps your French is rusty, Jolras, let me explain - 'Amis' means 'people who are fond of each other and spend time together regularly.' I may not be your friend, Monsieur, but I am theirs. I may be a new face this year to most of you, but to most of you I am not an unwelcome face."  
"Yes, yes, I see that. I'm sorry. Forgive me."  
"As if I could be angry with you anyway," Grantaire mumbled. "Hang on, stop, we're walking past my house now."  
Grantaire's house was not so different from Enjolras'; it was a little older and a storey taller, so with one more flat full of occupants. Grantaire lived on the second floor, that is, up two flights of rather questionable stairs; the door was white plastic, with the flat number, 3, scrawled on the front in Sharpie.  
Inside the flat had the air of more a den than a home. It was fairly tiny, a one bedroom affair with little living space: it consisted of a sofa, with enormous dust sheets draped over the ceiling light and hanging down over it, and a pile of cushions underneath to form a kind of fort; a small TV standing on an old crate; a little dirty kitchenette; and a battered baby grand piano, being used mostly as a table for the paints that went with the easel that was propped against the wall by the window. On the walls, unframed paper and canvas paintings were tacked up with blu-tac or badly-hammered nails; the subject matter was largely human and mostly minimalist, done in thick, dripping oil paints. Some of them were harder to make out than others; one, for example, was mostly a field of thick creamy paint, but for a sliver of curving black and a few dots and lines coming off it. After a moment of looking it was suddenly clear that it was the stark outline of a face in profile.  
“Your art seems… Nice,” Enjolras commented.  
“You clearly have no eye for art.” Grantaire threw his keys down on the kitchen counter, where they narrowly missed landing in a pot of painty water. “If my art was nice, I wouldn’t be living in a one bedroom flat.”  
“I don’t have any eye for art,” Enjolras agreed. “But I do know that really good art isn’t meant to be ‘nice’ at all.”  
“Um, thank you?”  
“Yeah, I’m not sure that was a compliment.”  
“Close enough.”  
Enjolras chuckled slightly.  
“Do you want, like, a drink? Or something to eat?”  
“No, I’m good. Thanks.”  
“Alright, well, good night.” and at the end of this line, he leaned in as if without thinking, as if it were a natural progression, and quickly kissed him.  
It wasn’t until after it had happened that he seemed to realised this was, in fact, not a natural progression at all and was actually pretty weird. He stared at Enjolras with wide, shocked eyes, moving his mouth as if to stammer some kind of apology. Enjolras simply stood motionless, frowning with confusion, his inner thoughts unfathomable.  
“Uhh… Sorry. Right. Well. I’ll just be going to, er….” Grantaire stammered as he turned around to go - to the kitchen perhaps, or just anywhere that was away.  
As he turned to go, however, Enjolras caught him by the arm, pulled him back around and kissed him right back.  
Grantaire’s mind went blank for a few seconds in sheer shock. This couldn’t be happening. In no world, even in the deepest pits of his imagination, did Enjolras kiss him. Never. Impossible. And yet, here it was. His senses were not particularly reliable at this time of night, usually, but there was no denying the slightly tense, static press of lips against his own, or the fingers digging into his arm. No denying the flutter of breath on his cheek, or the smell of male deodorant, and there was only one other person in the room that it could be.  
Less than three seconds later it was over. Enjolras was still wearing the same expression of concerned confusion as before, as if examining the results of a rather baffling experiment.  
They stared briefly at each other.  
“Goodnight,” Enjolras said shortly, and turned swiftly around to leave.  
“Wait, Enjolras, that’s - ” Grantaire protested, but Enjolras had gone into the other room and slammed the door.  
“That’s my bedroom,” Grantaire finished weakly. He was left standing alone in his living room with his heart in his mouth, feeling suddenly very alone.He gathered up a blanket from the floor, crawled into his fort and lay down there to sleep instead.  
Sleep didn’t come for quite some time.

The following morning was a Saturday. The tension across the city was tangible in the air, the streets rife with a tight sense of building pressure, ready to explode. Outside in the Latin Quarter, journalists (both student and professional) sat at spindly tables outside cafes, trying to put the feeling into words, while elderly gentlemen smoking on street corners with dogs on leads in their other hands tried very carefully not to acknowledge it at all to each other. The weather was once again good, for the season, but clouds streaked the sky with a warning of troubled times to come. An east wind was coming in, and it stirred the thin curtains in the room where Enjolras was sleeping and blew softly across his face, waking him early. The sun flooded the white bedsheets; in his own flat, he had shutters to keep out every hint of sunlight until he opened them and let in. As such, light had a propensity to wake him easily.  
He could also hear faint music.  
He opened his eyes and immediately jumped; directly above him, a painting of a young girl gazing out of a window and giggling looked down on him from the ceiling. He swore mutinously under his breath and got up, still wearing the clothes he’d put on yesterday morning. His shirt was filthy, but Jeans lasted more than a day or two. Luckily for him. These Jeans would last weeks if he went about it right.  
He gathered his coat from where it was piled up on the floor and looked at himself in the spotted mirror on the wall for a few seconds. He looked tired, and his hair was all flat on one side where he’d been sleeping. Pinned to the mirror, old concert tickets and postcards obscured parts of his reflection.  
With slight trepidation, he emerged into the living area. Grantaire was awake and sitting at the piano with a huge cup of coffee resting on a paint palette on top of it, wearing slightly steamed-up glasses and a vastly oversized t-shirt, much as he had been the previous morning on the quad. He was sitting on one of his hands and pressing the keys absent-mindedly in a vaguely familiar tune with the other. Something from a British art-rock band with a repetitive beat.  
“Morning,” he said as Enjolras emerged.  
“Morning.”  
Silence for a few seconds, broken only by odd one-dimensional sound of Grantaire’s one-handed piano tune.  
“Um, I’m just… Going home now,” Enjolras told him.  
Grantaire reached up, grabbed the mug full of painty water sitting next to his coffee mug, took a sip, and spat it out in disgust. “Ok, no problem,” He said in reply to Enjolras. “See ya.”  
“Just like that?”  
He turned around in his seat. “If you’d like to stay for a chat, be my guest. Breakfast? Coffee? I’m sure we could entertain ourselves for hours.” At the look of faintly disguised horror on Enjolras’ face, Grantaire rolled his eyes and clarified. “I’m kidding. I’m giving you an out, Enjolras; quick, run away from me while you still can.”  
“Oh. Right. Um, thank you.”  
“See you later.”  
Enjolras left to find a cafe for breakfast with the dull sounds of Grantaire’s piano following him downstairs. 

“You did what?!”  
“Keep your voice down,” Enjolras snapped. “I don’t want the whole campus knowing.”  
Enjolras and Combeferre were having breakfast on the lawn outside the main building of UPD; Enjolras had texted him shortly after leaving Grantaire’s house and they’d found each other, and the whole strange story had been told.  
“But why?” Combeferre asked. “I mean, I understand why he would, but you don’t seem all that thrilled about what you did; so why do it?”  
Enjolras rubbed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said. “It was a strange moment. You know how you get those weird blasts of curiosity now and then, where you kind of feel out-of-body and you just kind of… I don’t know. Like, imagine someone gives you something really strong and spicy and possibly horrible to taste for the first time, like wasabi, except they only give you the tiniest bit and you don't really taste anything, and even though you should be counting your blessings, you kind of want to try it properly, so you take the whole spoonful without even thinking. Do you see what I mean?”  
Combeferre was silent, waiting for more.  
“I mean, it was really bad of me,” Enjolras continued. “Clearly I’m a terrible person.”  
“What? What do you mean? He kissed you first, it’s his fault anything happened at all.”  
“You said you understand why he would do that, though. It’s fair enough for him to do it.”  
Combeferre ruffled his hair. “Because you’re such a pretty boy.”  
Enjolras batted his hand away irritably. “Whatever. The point is, I’m assuming he kissed me because he wanted to, at least a little bit - ”  
“A lot.”  
Enjolras ignored him again. “- And from the evidence that you seem to be so keen to present, we can be fairly sure of that; we’ve drawn no new conclusions from the night’s events. Apparently we knew all we needed to know about Grantaire and his feelings - and then some - before last night. He knows nothing about me or my thoughts or feelings, nothing but what could be guessed. Guessed, for example, from something like a kiss.” He shook his head. “I may not like the man, but I have no cause to hurt him unduly, for no reason.”  
“Mmm. That’s good of you, I suppose.”  
“It’s the basest kind of decency a person can offer. Good intentions don’t cancel out a bad action.”  
“Jolras, you’re not suddenly a bad person now,” Combeferre said wearily. “You’re allowed to make mistakes - if, indeed, it was a mistake.”  
“Of course it was. What would you call it?”  
“I don’t know, I wasn’t there.”  
“You weren’t, were you?” Enjolras said with a hint of bitterness. “That’s how this whole mess started. Listen to you, acting all shocked earlier; what were you up to?”  
“Something rational and consensual with someone I liked and trusted,” Combeferre defended. “What was it you were doing? Irrationally and unexpectedly kissing someone you hated?”  
Enjolras sighed.  
“Come on, what’s the dramatic sigh for?”  
“I just realised how little I care,” Enjolras replied. “I’ve lost interest now.”  
“You don’t want to braid my hair, eat cookie dough and talk about boys? What kind of a friend are you?” Combeferre laughed. “Well, I say good; I’d rather not talk about it anyway.”  
Enjolras wasn’t listening. “Don’t you feel like Paris is different today, Ferre?” He said. Combeferre rolled his eyes fondly. “There’s something in the air. The people are starting to pull together, and also to move apart. The attacks have been like a flocculant for Parisians. Now is the time we see who we really are. Is everyone still on for tomorrow? There haven’t been any complications?”  
“Not that I’ve heard. Ask Courfeyrac; he’s the networking hub.”  
“I will.” Enjolras only had a few numbers in his phone, for a leader; Combeferre (on speed dial), Courfeyrac, Marius, and Joly. The others had to contact him in a more roundabout way, usually via Courfeyrac.  
Today was going to be a restless day; Enjolras’ disturbed sleeping schedule, ruffled state of slight confusion, and above all, massive anticipation for tomorrow, had all converged on him at once, and he had nothing to occupy him for the twenty or so hours between now and the next day. He was fidgety and restless. His hands shook around his coffee cup. What could he possibly do for twenty hours? He hadn’t rationed his workload well enough. He’d finished all his essays, he’d made all his plans for the march, he couldn’t concentrate on his reading and he’d outsourced the making of banners and buying of flags to others.  
So he did a lot of walking. He walked three times around the campus in total. He walked back home to get a smoothie from his own fridge and then walked back to drink it. He walked around every shelf in the library looking for authors with the same name as him, or someone he knew, until he was kicked out. He went to the bathroom four times in one hour; once to actually go to the bathroom, once to retrieve his phone, which he’d left there, once to wash his hands for no reason, and once just to stare at himself in the mirror. He wrote a rousing speech on a scrap of paper, and doodled around the edges. He spent time people-watching, wondering who would be there tomorrow, who would be on what side of the ongoing argument that was just beginning. Who here could he trust?  
Combeferre didn’t move for the five or so hours Enjolras was trying to occupy himself; he was the eye in that hurricane of a day, sipping tea and writing his essay peacefully.  
“Jolras, please, find something to do and stick with it,” he said at around four. “You’re making me dizzy. I’m out of breath just watching you pace.”  
“Give me something to do.”  
“Far be it for me to tell you what to do.”  
“Anything. I’m losing my mind.”  
“Go home. Cook meals for the next week. Freeze them. Then go to bed.”  
“I’m not doing that.”  
“Then don’t say ‘anything.’ Go to the bar and see if anyone else has something for you to do.”  
“I don’t want to go to the bar.”  
“Why not?”  
He shrugged uncomfortably.  
“Is this because of Grantaire?”  
“No,” Enjolras replied a little too quickly.  
“Come on, Enjolras, he’s always there and he’s always a bother but you always cope. I’ve never seen you so ruffled up by someone before. No one can influence your actions. You go where you want, and fuck everyone else. And now Grantaire has you hiding under a stone?”  
“No!”  
“Then go!”  
“I will!”  
As he left, Combeferre chuckled. “And here I am saying nobody can influence you.”

"Isn't she just glorious?" Marius was sighing. "She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. I don't know how I've lived so long without her there. Does she even know I exist? Can she feel the same? Or am I just left to go mad on my own?"  
The interior of Musain was draped with sheets of paper and fabric, paint drying where it had been formed into words; people had been making banners and signs to hold tomorrow.  
Eponine gave Marius a shove and said, "Alright, Sappho, you just go and sit over there in the 'I'm pathetically obsessed with an unattainable blonde who doesn't know I exist' corner with R."  
Grantaire chuckled ruefully into his glass, unable to argue. Marius sat down on the table, just beside where Grantaire's feet were, gazing down at a Facebook profile on his phone. Marius’ lady friend was smiling up at him out of it, face surrounded by swathes of blonde hair; she reminded Grantaire immediately of Enjolras. Not that they were at all similar looking - her hair was a completely different shade of blonde, and her eyes were green - but almost anything could remind Grantaire of Enjolras. He thought Enjolras was better looking. Sure, the woman was beautiful, but in a rather unobtrusive way - pretty, but with no punch. Her face might turn people’s heads, but it wouldn’t make crowds part as she passed. Enjolras could do that. This girl’s face was all soft lines and gentle, open features; Enjolras’ face was all dramatic angles and sharp jawline and defined lips and eyes that hit you more like a punch in the stomach than a cool breeze. His expressions were more disciplined and guarded but also more striking and meaningful than the girl’s candid smile. You could use Enjolras’ face to paint a masterpiece, and this lady’s to compose some cute shots for a pale hipster fashion blog. She could be a model, but he could be art.  
"Well, who is she, then?" Grantaire probed.  
"I don't really know," Marius replied.  
"True love at it's finest, ladies and gents," Grantaire announced. "You must at least know her name?"  
"I do now," he said, displaying the phone screen. "Turns out Eponine knew her. Which she failed to tell me about until today, little miss," he added with fond censure.  
"Haha, yeah, funny," Eponine said with a weak laugh.  
Grantaire raised an eyebrow at her. "How very lax of you," he said.  
Bite me, she mouthed back at him, unable to fight back any more vociferously in front of Marius.  
"I haven't seen her in a long time," was her only defence. "I didn't recognise her for a while."  
"Oh, relax, Ponine, I don't blame you," Marius replied fondly. "Her name, Grantaire, is Cosette."  
"Ooh, Cosette. She sounds posh. Is she posh?"  
"It appears she has come into money," Eponine said bitterly. She herself had fallen out of fortune. Poor Eponine; of all Les Amis, Grantaire felt closest to her. Perhaps he wouldn't call her his best friend - although she was very high on the list - but he felt as if they were in the same boat, heading up the same shit creek without a paddle. However, it seemed their paths were diverging somewhat; now Marius had found some bourgeois, two-a-penny thing to obsess over, and Eponine had to deal with something new: jealousy. Grantaire had not considered how he might feel if Enjolras started seeing someone; he simply didn't think it would ever happen. He didn't think he'd be all that upset. What would change? He could no more stop loving Enjolras than he could stop his own heart beating, and his chances of achieving some kind of romantic relationship with him were almost zero as it was, and he didn't feel any different because of that. All he wanted was to not be hated by Enjolras. Anything more positive than 'mild disdain' level from him was a soaring victory for Grantaire.  
And now? What about now? Was he moving forwards in his prospects while Eponine fell backwards? He wasn't sure where he stood now. What did last night mean? Had he been wrong about his chances all along? Or was he jumping at something that meant nothing?  
"Should I message her?" Marius asked the room at large. "No, maybe I should just like some of her photos."  
"Just going through liking her photos is creepy," Grantaire said.  
"So is just messaging her out of the blue," Eponine said.  
"Depends how she feels about you," Grantaire said. "Is this going to be a nice, in-your-face, earthly, openly reciprocated kind of love, or the kind that's more of an ethereal connection, a metaphysical bond that cannot be expressed through mere internet messages? Is yours a connection that's plain to see in writing, or hidden deep in the pixels of that slightly over-edited profile picture? Eponine, be a dear and get me another scotch; pick up something for yourself too. I'll be over here at the piano."  
The door opened and a flash of red caught Grantaire's eye as he got up to sit at the piano. Enjolras. He instinctively stopped in his tracks, then told himself to keep walking and sit down.  
“Enjolras!” Marius greeted cheerfully. “Everything is in order. The others have gone to buy a flag. They’ll be back soon. Hey, did you get home alright last night? I saw you fell asleep. You weren’t left here all night, were you?”  
Perhaps he was imagining it, but Grantaire thought he saw Enjolras blush slightly in the corner of his eye. “I was fine, thank you, Marius,” he said.  
“Well, good.” Marius’ voice was distant, his eyes darting back to the glow of his phone screen, where Cosette’s toothy smile beamed up at him.  
“Hello, Enjolras,” Eponine said with a forced smile. “Are you getting a drink? Will you get me one when you go?”  
“You just got one when you got me one,” Grantaire said.  
“I’d like another one though.”  
“I think it’s a little early to be drinking, but I suppose I might get tea,” Enjolras said, taking the money Eponine offered for her drink.  
“It’s not so early,” she said with a grin. “R is on his fourth scotch already.”  
“I’d say it’s early.”  
“It’s after noon,” Grantaire protested. “I make a point not to drink between five AM and noon, if I can help it. Seven hours for my liver to recover.”  
“I think it might want more time than that, if you could ask it,” Marius said.  
“Well, I can’t. No doubt there’s all kinds of horrible mutations going on down there, but it hasn’t yet developed the ability to speak.” He patted the piano. “Any requests?”  
Again, Grantaire wasn’t sure - he was only watching out of the corner of his eye - but he thought he saw Enjolras open his mouth briefly before stopping himself from speaking. He wondered if he was about to ask what he’d been playing this morning, but thought better of it.  
Grantaire opened up the piano and started playing absent-mindedly; he chose a song he knew well enough to play without having to look at the keys. Enjolras was leaning on the other end of the piano, looking at some of the painted banners draped over it.  
At length the others started to return and the quiet started to fade into a general hubub. On the big table beside the piano, the majority of Les Amis sat playing cards in a circle, murmuring amongst themselves. Courfeyrac was winning the most hands; he had excellent luck, and he was the resident expert on every game and trick a person could play with a deck. The only person who could beat him was Grantaire, who wasn’t playing; even then, Grantaire and Courfeyrac were fairly evenly matched, and if they’d taken their bets seriously they would have lost thousands to each other. Legle was losing. He almost always lost. Enjolras had gone out a few rounds back. Grantaire was at least halfway through his repertoire of movie soundtracks, whistling along to Dead Girl Walking.  
There was a tiny tap on Grantaire’s shoulder. He paused in his whistling, then decided he must have imagined the light touch and continued. Seconds later the tap came again, and this time he turned around. Enjolras was at his shoulder.  
Grantaire closed his song with a conclusive chord and turned around. “Alright?”  
“Mm. Can I have a word?”  
“You... want to talk?”  
“Mm. I assume you can guess what about.”  
“Perhaps.”  
“I’d rather nobody overheard.”  
“Of course. But you know, people are going to see us walking away together, and if you don’t want to be seen talking to me, you don’t want to be seen leaving with me.”  
Enjolras shook his head and shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t mind that much. But, ahh, maybe if you go on just a little bit ahead...”  
“Yeah, I gotcha.”  
It was cold outside, and the steam from the bar’s vent mingled with steam from Grantaire’s breath. Cigarette butts and discarded bottle caps littered the floor of the alleyway; there was some other stuff around too, but nobody wanted to look closely enough to identify it.  
“Well, this isn’t at all awkward,” Grantaire said to Enjolras as he came out of the door, wrapped in his coat. He looked vaguely dishevelled, and tired.  
“It wouldn’t be if you hadn’t just pointed it out,” Enjolras replied sharply. It had started to rain slightly.  
“Well, what is it that brings us here this fine evening? Isn’t it almost the Big Day? Why are you wasting your time with me?”  
“I just wanted to apologise.”  
“Apologise for what?”  
“You know what. I don’t know why I… Did what I did. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking. I was reckless, and thoughtless, and I think I did something unintentionally cruel. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me. I should have stayed to explain. I’m sorry. I hope you understand, and that you can forgive me.”  
“What are you talking about? Of course I forgive you. I didn’t get any ideas.”  
“Mm. I hoped as much. No-one would jump to conclusions over a little thing like that. You’re no idealist, you’d have no misconceptions yet.”  
“Then why the big apology? Wait, what do you mean yet?”  
Enjolras’ eyes had that hard, soldierly intensity to them again, as if he’d made a stupid decision and was daring the world to question him. “Kiss me,” he said.  
Grantaire blinked in surprise. “Excuse me?”  
Enjolras’ fingers gripped his arm, the same as they had done last night. “You heard,” He said firmly. “Do it.”  
“Are you insane? Do you even like me?”  
“No,” Enjolras replied frankly. “Not really. But perhaps I could grow to.”  
“You really have lost your mind.”  
He looked briefly down at the ground, blond eyelashes obscuring his eyes like lady’s fans. “Maybe. Are you complaining?”  
When he looked back up, his eyes seemed all the brighter for the moment of shade.  
“Hell no,” Grantaire replied, fingers subconsciously brushing the arm that was holding his. “So, you just apologised a good thirty second’s worth of apology for something you were… about to do? And you’re still going to do it even though you just acknowledged that you were being reckless and thoughtless?”  
“Good, we’re on the same page. So, will you be sensible? Stop me before I do something stupid?”  
“Who are you talking to? Of course not.”  
“Excellent. Now stop hedging and kiss me.”  
So he did. 

"I saw you out the window."  
Grantaire looked around; near the window of the bar, Eponine was sitting on a table and grinning. Everyone was still playing cards - a different game now - and talking in low voices about the next day. Enjolras had joined them, but returned too late to be dealt in.  
"What?" Grantaire said to Eponine.  
"I was sitting here by the window and I saw you. Kissing someone. A blond someone. Making out against the wall in the alley - congratulations. Say, I don't suppose you saw where Enjolras went to for the last five, ten minutes? He can't have been far behind you when he left."  
He scowled at her. "You saw nothing," he instructed.  
"Why not? Surely you don't want to keep it quiet if you're seeing each other..."  
"Well we aren't, so keep it shut, okay?" He say down beside her.  
"Ooh, right. That's rough, man. I'll try not to gossip."  
"Oh, no, I'm fine. Pretty damn good, actually. Better off than you, anyway. How are you doing?"  
"I'll survive." She rested her head on his shoulder. "How was it? Or, how was he?"  
"Those are two different questions."  
"Not really."  
"Yes, they are. One is objective, the other subjective. I mean, it was great, like, for me. I'm not going to complain - frankly he could walk down my spine in stilettos and I'd thank him. But objectively -" he laughed. "He was kind of bad. Like, I liked it, but someone who was a tiny bit less obsessed might have been a touch disappointed that someone with such pretty face was about as skilled in such matters as a fourteen year old girl."  
"Ouch."  
"Like I said, totally not complaining. I think it’s cute."  
Eponine looked at Enjolras across the room and tilted her head appraisingly. "You probably should have told him to flatten his hair down."  
"Meh, it's funny."

"Enjolras, your hair looks like something attacked you," Combeferre said at the card table.  
"Does it?" He hastily ran his hands through it, blushing a little. Some time had passed; Grantaire was sitting at the piano again, his playing a good deal clumsier for reasons suggested by the regiment of empty glasses and bottles sitting on the instrument; his singing, however, had got plenty louder.  
Combeferre lowered his voice. "Is there something you might want to tell me about?"  
"Nothing of consequence," he said sharply. "Now shh, I'm trying to listen to the actual important conversation."  
"This conversation is nothing we haven't discussed already. No amount of extra talk now is going to make a difference. All we need now is rest, and relaxation." He addressed this to everyone. "Trust me, I'm a doctor."  
"Perhaps we should go home,” Enjolras suggested.  
Combeferre gave him a strange look from the corner of his eye. “Perhaps. Shall we?”  
“I’d like to finish this game,” Courfeyrac, who was winning, said. “Who’s with me?”  
Most of the other players agreed. Combeferre and Enjolras were the only ones not dealt in. Joly was the only other person to agree to go home early, but their paths would diverge shortly after leaving the bar.  
They left with Grantaire’s singing ringing in their ears. Enjolras looked over his shoulder at him, and caught him watching him leave with a good natured smile. Enjolras smiled back, then turned up the collar of his coat and went out into the cold.  
“What happened?” Combeferre asked him when Joly was gone.  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
“Yes you do. I saw you sneaking away with R earlier. You need to get a grip. What the hell is going on in that pretty blond head of yours?”  
“I’m still not entirely sure.”  
“You can’t say this is pure impulsive messing around anymore; you’re sober and you’ve had plenty of time to think. Are you actually starting to like him?”  
“Grantaire? Hm. I certainly don’t think he’s irredeemable. I mean, I don’t really like him. I don’t. But I think perhaps he might be changing for the better. In which case, I could certainly like him much better.”  
“And you’ve decided to get with him preemptively in anticipation of this change?”  
“Don’t talk like that.”  
“No, of course. It’d take more than the chance of possibly not being a bad person to win your heart. But you can't just be in it for... Well, he's not all that... Physically attractive..."  
"Mm, so I've heard said."  
Combeferre looked surprised. "You disagree? You think he's attractive?"  
Enjolras only allowed himself a second’s pause to examine this. Grantaire was hardly an Adonis, but he had very brown eyes, a deep, warm, bright russet brown that showed spots of light particularly dramatically. There was a comforting - if slightly irritating - expression of surety and amusement in those eyes, as well as a nicely self-esteem-boosting element of admiration, and he tended to tilt his head down and look up through his lashes slightly when he looked at you. He held himself with an ease and looseness that was unexpectedly appealing, and he had expressive eyebrows and a nose with character and a smile that was charmingly crooked. There was something about all the little bits of asymmetry, about his unruly hair and his scrappy hoodies and his general aura of mess and carelessness that Enjolras now found bizarrely inviting - especially with those slightly lopsided, battered glasses he wore when he was hung over. Frankly Enjolras was vaguely disgusted at himself for even subconsciously thinking so, but it seemed that he, like so many others before him, was susceptible to such predictable tropes as hero worship and roguish charm.  
"I'm no connoisseur of aesthetics and beauty, Ferre,” he said, “but I suppose some part of me must feel that he's attractive, or how could anything that's happened be explained?" He rubbed one eye with a hand, tugging uncomfortably at the end of his scarf with the other and sighing. "You'll understand if I'm not the most interesting gossip. I've never really... Felt anything like this nonsense now before. I don't know what to tell you. It's a strange feeling I don't know a lot about. I'm trying to figure it out, and that's why I - I don't know. I'm trying something. Let it play out."  
"Yeah, be my guest," Combeferre said. Then, after a pause, "You know I kinda thought you were just... You know, married to the people or whatever."  
"I'm as surprised as you are. I always thought my brain was better occupied in bigger matters." After a moment he added angrily, "And I was right, dammit; let's change the subject. Stupid crappy gossip like this has no business in my mind at this juncture in history. For the next few days I forbid you from talking about it. I simply won't acknowledge you if you do."  
"Whatever you say. Come on, hurry, or we'll miss the train."

(From a Parisian journalist's report in Les Monde, Jan 11th 2015)  
Some forty world leaders today joined millions of demonstrators on the streets of Paris in historic unity marches following the recent shootings and hostage situations initiated by ISIS affiliated gunmen this week. In a rare state-organised peace demonstration following the Charlie Hebdo shootings and kosher grocery sieges, France aimed to preach tolerance and non-violence towards all demographics in an effort to unite the people and prevent further hate from spreading.  
The call for "reform not retaliation" was clear at the marches today, where Parisians - and protestors from further afield - of all creeds came together around the Palais de l'Élysée. Demonstrators were largely young people, with a large percentage of students present.  
One large group of UPD students, who will remain anonymous, were spotted by this reporter near La Concorde defending a Muslim demonstrator from whom opposing protesters had attempted to steal a hijab. The young men - and one young woman - had been here since around eight o'clock, dressed up warm to stay here until sunset. When asked why they were here today, a representative replied, "Why wouldn't we be? In these times of unease, times of conflict, we need to make sure that everyone has a place and a voice in our society. When we're scared, we have a tendency to assign blame to anyone who we see as different to us, and we ignore the truth to comfort ourselves - that isn't the way forward. The way forward is not to revoke trust, it's to show even more trust. The more we push the persecuted away, the more blame we assign, the more trouble we spread. It leads to revenge being rained down on the wrong people, and misdirected revenge leads to war. We need to make sure that the only people blamed for these crimes are the ones that committed them." Moving words indeed.  
The group were hoping to stay until midnight, but the marchers were dispersed as it started to get dark, in order to avoid possible violence. 

"This is bullshit," Enjolras said. He was usually elated at events like this - in fact he had been most of the day, riding the strange high he got from trying to save the world (or maybe just from yelling his opinions to a crowd). But his mood had deteriorated throughout the day, and as the crowd was dispersed he aimed a moody kick at the tire of a nearby police car, which gave him a precautionary beep of its siren as he passed by.  
"It's alright, Jolras," Courfeyrac told him. "We've been here all day. People have listened. That reporter talked to us. We helped that poor hijabi girl. We've done good. And I understand you want to stay longer, I do - I want to stay too. But there's no point stirring up trouble."  
"Isn't stirring up trouble the whole point of being here?" Enjolras replied.  
"Hear, hear!" Bahorel agreed.  
"Not stirring up trouble is the reason we're here," Combeferre reminded them sharply. "We're preaching peace."  
"Not everyone is going to be peaceful tonight," Enjolras argued. "Someone ought to defend the vulnerable."  
"Have you seen how many police cars are here?"  
"The police are corrupt," Enjolras said loudly enough for a nearby cop to hear him.  
"Watch that tongue, kid," the cop warned without much conviction.  
"Watch this city and I'll watch my tongue."  
"There'll be peace tonight, Enjolras," Jehan told him gently. "This whole thing was too public, too high-profile and too state-protected for anyone to risk casual attacks. There's too much security, what with the world leaders here. There'll be nothing we can do."  
"The world leaders thing was bull, too," Enjolras grumbled. "They emerged onto a cordoned off street alone to pose for a few photos - that was their 'gesture of solidarity'."  
"It sucks, Enjolras, but you can't expect them to risk their lives," Joly reasoned. "The world would fall into chaos if any of those people got hurt."  
Enjolras couldn't argue with that, but he'd have liked to. There was nothing like a good argument when you were in a bad mood. And he was in a bad mood. Why?  
One of Les Amis was missing. Nobody else had noticed - or rather, they had noticed, but nobody else had expected Grantaire to turn up. Why would he?  
In the morning, Enjolras hadn’t been thinking about it, as promised. At around noon, he’d started to keep an eye out, expectant, confident, hopeful. At about two he’d started to lose hope. He took Combeferre aside briefly.  
“Have you seen Grantaire since last night?” He’d asked.  
“No,” Combeferre replied. “Why?”  
“I was just wondering if he was around.”  
“Why would he be around here? Did he say he was coming?”  
“No.”  
“Did you ask him to come?”  
“No.”  
Combeferre frowned, looking confused. “Then why are you expecting him?”  
“I don’t know. Perhaps I thought… No, forget it. It doesn’t matter.”  
By evening he was downright grumpy. Not thinking about it was a lot easier when he was focussed on something else; now that that something else was over, his mind was starting to travel again down the unfamiliar lanes it had been exploring these few days. So far these strange mental journeys had been confusing, nerve-wracking, and distracting, but never precisely bad. Now it was bad. Now he was starting to see in himself the stereotypical reactions his friends seemed to go through when things happened in their personal lives; getting pissed off for no reason, getting your expectations too high, trying not to think about something and then thinking about it anyway.  
“We still have time to go to the law ball,” Legle pointed out. “We might as well put in an appearance. It’s the only appearance I’ll be making in the law department this year, after all.”  
“Aren’t you worried your teachers are going to have a go at you when you turn up?” asked Joly.  
“How could they? They don’t know what I look like. ”  
“Anyone who’s got any energy left, come to the party,” Marius said. “But first, go home, take a quick shower, and change into something acceptable.”  
“Shame, I was hoping to wear something unacceptable,” Bahorel said. “But I’ll play along this time.”  
“Enjolras, will you come?” Combeferre asked. “You can’t be tired. This kind of thing actually seems to give you more energy.”  
“I might, I suppose.”  
“Great.” Then he frowned. “But not just because you have a bone to pick?”  
“Of course not.”  
“I’m not so sure I believe you.”  
“Believe what you want. Let’s go home and change.”

Fancy clothes were not something Enjolras had a vast collection of. He only owned the one suit - a fairly cheap, shiny, navy affair - no ties at all, maybe one shirt that could be called formal at a push, and the closest thing to dress shoes in his wardrobe were a pair of brown things with peeling soles. He did what he could; he couldn’t borrow much from Combeferre, who was a very different size to him, but he managed to wrangle a black tie which, it turned out, he couldn’t tie. He tried, then gave up and left it on his bed to hurry out of the door after Combeferre (who was immaculate, of course), too proud to ask for help.  
There was a smattering of applause when Les Amis opened the doors to the ballroom and entered; most of the law students knew at least a few of them, and they all seemed to know where they’d been for the first hour or so of the party. Enjolras smiled vaguely and nodded acknowledgement.  
The first familiar sight he saw was Eponine; somehow she’d managed to make it here before all of them. She was wearing a pretty, second-hand dress made of layers of floaty red material, and was talking to a waifish blonde girl in baby blue. As he watched, Enjolras saw her beckon someone over, and Marius brushed through the crowd eagerly towards them; Eponine introduced him to the girl with a huge, slightly forced smile. He could hardly tell who looked more delighted - the blonde girl or Marius.  
After a moment Eponine slipped away, leaving the pair talking. She went over to the drinks table and poured herself a generous cup of punch. She then leaned against the table, and dropped straight into conversation with Grantaire, who was leaning there too, wearing mostly black but with a flash of very bright, deep green that might have been a tie or a waistcoat, or both.  
Combeferre, who was at Enjolras’ shoulder, followed his gaze and gripped his arm tightly. “Enjolras, please, don’t go and be a dick to him. Maybe just leave him alone until you’ve cooled off a bit, yeah?”  
Enjolras brushed his hand away, said, “Don’t tell me what to do,” and headed over there anyway.  
“Enjolras,” Combeferre protested weakly as he vanished into the crowd.  
Eponine and Grantaire seemed to be talking about clothes; they were admiring each other’s outfits and laughing at other peoples’. Eponine tugged at the end of Grantaire’s tie admiringly, and for a second Enjolras felt something like jealousy flare up in his chest, before he brushed it aside with a mental laugh at himself; such a ridiculous notion had never entered his mind as Eponine and Grantaire. What on earth was he thinking? He was going mad.  
When he was within earshot of their conversation, Enjolras stopped and listened to them talk.  
“I don’t even understand how she got here,” Grantaire was saying to Eponine. “She doesn’t even go here.”  
“Neither do I,” she replied.  
“You were invited.”  
“Yep, and I invited her.”  
Grantaire stared at her. “You invited her? Why?”  
“I know her, remember? Marius doesn’t really. But he would have wanted her here. So I invited her and introduced them.”  
Grantaire looked to be speechless.  
“She may be prettier and cuter and richer and better dressed and classier and more popular than me,” Eponine continued nonchalantly, “but at least I know I’m smarter than her.”  
Grantaire was looking at her with that familiar, almost stereotypical Grantaire expression of admiration. She laughed.  
“Why are you looking at me like I’m some kind of angel, man?” She said. “All I did was the right thing.”  
“Yeah, but in your case the right thing really sucked. You’re hardcore, Eponine.”  
“Look who’s talking about doing the right thing,” Enjolras said, and the pair of them quickly turned around, startled.  
“I have to go,” Eponine said quickly, and scuttled off so fast it almost looked like she’d vanished into thin air.  
“Hey, Enjolras,” Grantaire said cheerfully. “Do you have a cat?”  
“I - what?” Enjolras was so taken aback by the question that all his planned speeches flew out of his head.  
“You’re a cat person, right? Which is kind of weird straight away, I mean, I’m a dog person and usually in life cat people and dog people just don’t get attracted to each other, it doesn’t happen. Anyway, I know that life without your preferred pet around can be kinda empty, so I was just hoping you had a cat. I don’t have a dog, but I think I need one. Thoughts?”  
“Thoughts? I don’t have any thoughts on whether you should get a dog or not! Stop trying to change the subject!”  
“What subject? I’m the one who started this conversation. There was no subject before I started talking.”  
“I started this conversation. I started with that remark about ‘the right thing’.”  
“I’m fairly sure it was Eponine I talked to about that.”  
“And I butted in!”  
“Did you? How rude.”  
“Will you stop messing around and listen to me!” Enjolras cried. “Where have you been today, while the rest of us were on the streets protecting the innocent and demanding equality? Day drinking? Getting your hair done?”  
“Ill in bed?” Grantaire suggested, raising one eyebrow. “Because that’s the truth. I woke up with a migraine this morning. The only reason I’m here now is because I downed about eight different painkillers.”  
For the second time, all of Enjolras’ words were surprised away. “And you’re still drinking?”  
“It said on the packets that the pills would allow me to continue with my everyday activities.”  
Enjolras shook his head. “I don’t see how you’re well enough to be here, but you weren’t well enough to be there.”  
“I actually have this new theory called ‘the passage of time’,” Grantaire replied. “You see, things change as time moves forward. Migraines go away. Goldfish die. Double denim goes out of fashion. It’s crazy.”  
“You’re being pretty sarcastic today, aren’t you? What happened to all that respect you had for me a few days ago?”  
“Oh, you think I don’t respect you anymore? Actually, I think I’m just less scared of you. Awe can easily be mistaken for respect. Relax, will you?”  
“Let’s not start making this about our relationship, such as it is; the real question is, what right do you have to go around talking about ‘doing the right thing’, when you’ve gone your whole life without believing in any kind of morality?”  
Grantaire laughed slightly, and lifted his hand as if to stroke back Enjolras’ hair. “Enjolras - ” he began in a fond, gentle tone, as if to placate him.  
Enjolras swatted away his hand angrily. “No. Answer my question.”  
Grantaire looked chastened. “Fine. Look, I understand morality. I’m not a bad person. What I don’t believe in is your kind of morality, inspiring though it is - ”  
“Clearly not inspiring enough to inspire you.”  
“It does inspire me! Remember to come by and look at my paintings some time, then maybe you’ll see how it inspires me. Look, I never once suggested that your opinions were bad ones - I do understand that people in the world are suffering for no reason, and that there is a great need for acceptance and kindness towards the marginalised, but the difference is that I don’t think there’s anything I can do to change this shitty world! You, your problem is that you really think you can climb this unclimbable mountain, and you’re not even bothering to strap on a harness because you don’t care what the climb does to you! So by all means, do believe in whatever you want, but if you try to shove your self-sacrificing ideals down everyone’s throats there’ll be nobody left alive in the world to protect!”  
“I see no shame in dying for my cause!” Enjolras said savagely.  
“Well maybe you should! Your life is too valuable to throw away!” He stopped and let out a deep breath, then began again more calmly. “We’re arguing about the wrong thing. You’re upset that I didn’t turn up to your march. You know I would have been there if I could. That’s why you were expecting me. I’d have come anyway, whatever I believe or don’t believe, to see you and make sure you were okay. If you’d actually asked me to come, I would have tried my utmost to be there.”  
“But why?” Enjolras asked wearily.  
Grantaire laughed bitterly. “You’re really gonna make me come out and say it, aren’t You? Because I love you, you idiot.” At the look on Enjolras’ face he laughed again. “Come on, don’t look all surprised, don’t pretend you had no idea - it’s obvious. It’s been obvious since the moment I first saw you. I was lost, right away, I was yours. And I don’t care what you have to say, I don’t care that you don’t feel like I do. I love you, so much so it’s become a part of who I am; I can’t stop loving you, and I can’t come close to deserving the same in return, and I don’t need the same return. I just want your happiness. I want to be near you. And I’ll love you however you want me to; you can go and fall in love with someone else and I’d feel just as blessed to be your friend, your brother. However you want me, that’s how I’ll be. To be loved by you, in any way, would be an honour I can never deserve, but an honour I would try to live up to in any way I could. Any way.”  
His fingers were wrapped around Enjolras’ wrist. Enjolras stared at him blankly, cold with shock. A few familiar faces - including Eponine - had started to drift over to see what they were fighting about, and they had all fallen into shocked silence too, creating a bubble of quiet and stillness around them.  
Enjolras swallowed hard, and then turned swiftly around and marched away as quickly as he could without running.  
“Oh, damn, dude,” he heard Eponine stage-whisper to Grantaire as he walked away; he could see her reflection in the window, a slash of red, slowly linking arms with him and staring up at him. “That was some heavy shit. I think you need a drink.”

Paris remained tense over the next few days. Over these few days, Enjolras had been out in it, taking it all in. He’d been getting up much too early and leaving, finding breakfast at around six in a cafe - never Musain - and stayed out all day, in class or out and about, and then stayed out much of the night, and then he’d come home and go straight to bed and repeat the cycle again. It was exhausting, and he was exhausted. He lasted like this for four days before finally he slept through his five AM alarm and woke up at noon like a normal student.  
His aim in this routine had, of course, been only partly to ‘breathe in the air of Paris’ or ‘be among The People at every time of day’, as he’d told himself. He hadn’t only been trying to attune himself with the city; he’d been avoiding everyone he knew. And that included his roommate, hence the dodgy sleeping schedule. On the fourth day, Combeferre could not be avoided.  
Enjolras woke up to see him leaning against the doorframe of his room. He jumped slightly, then sighed as if accepting his fate.  
“How are you?” Combeferre asked him gently.  
“What?”  
“Are you okay? I haven’t seen you since the ball.”  
“I’ve been busy.”  
“Have you now?” Combeferre sighed. “Why won’t you talk to anyone? Not even me? Come on, talk to me. Tell me how you’re doing.”  
“I’m doing just fine.”  
“No, you’re not. Listen to you, your voice is actually hoarse from not talking for so long. Why did you just run out like that? I expected to find you back here, but you were nowhere to be found. Where did you go?”  
“Around.”  
Combeferre sat down on Enjolras’ bed. “What Grantaire said…”  
“I heard what he said for myself, thanks.”  
“...Was it really so bad? He wasn’t asking for anything. And last time I checked, you quite liked him.”  
Enjolras sighed and rubbed his eyes. “It’s not that it was so bad. It’s just… Well, what’s a person meant to say to something like that?”  
“I don’t know.”  
“Neither did I. I still don’t. What can I say? I panicked. Or rather, I decided to make a strategic retreat. Take some time to figure it out. But I still don’t know what I’m meant say. And as soon as I see someone who heard - well, they’re going to ask me. And I still don’t know what to say.”  
"You don't have to say anything."  
"Yes I do. You must see what it’s like. You're seeing someone, aren't you?"  
Combeferre was so surprised he managed to choke on thin air. "How do you know that? You've been AWOL for the entirety of our public relationship!"  
"I guessed. I've noticed you staying out nights. Courfeyrac, right?"  
"Okay, the staying out was kind of a clue, but how could you know who?"  
"Well, it's a process of elimination: you don't socialise with anyone except the usual Musain crowd, and in that crowd only four of the men are interested in men. One is you, and I assume you're not dating yourself; one, apparently, is me, and unless I have a severe memory issues I don't think it's me either; one is Grantaire, and I'm fairly sure it's not him - I hear he’s in love with someone else. The only remaining candidate is Courfeyrac."  
"How impressive, Sherlock."  
"We're moving away from the point," Enjolras said. "The point being, you're with someone, haven't been together long - how would you feel if he suddenly declared his love for you? What would you say?"  
"It's different. It wouldn't happen."  
"Say it did."  
"I'd tell him he was insane. Of course he doesn't love me, we've been together less than a week. That's why it's different. That would be out of the blue, unexpected, illogical and totally untrue. Grantaire, however, does love you, and we all had an inkling that he did from the start. Love at first sight, and shit."  
"And that makes it easier, does it?" Enjolras decided it might be an idea to get out of bed and get dressed.  
"Of course not. It might make it more important though. More important that you don't just say something without thinking."  
"I've been thinking for the last three days and I'm no closer to an answer," Enjolras said from inside a t-shirt he was putting on. "So what do you suggest?"  
"Keep thinking. But don't avoid us. Come to Musain for coffee."  
"What, and just ignore him?"  
"You could maybe apologise, and tell him you're still thinking?"  
"Like that wouldn't be a stab in the heart."  
"No more so than not seeing you at all."  
Enjolras wrapped a scarf around his neck and sighed. "How has he been?"  
"Okay. Back to his old self really."  
"When was he not himself?"  
"Didn't you notice? That long weekend when you two were... Whatever you were, he wasn't drinking as much. I mean, he was still drinking, but not getting quite so drunk. Now he's back to being hammered within an hour of arriving at the bar. Effective as soon as you left the ball."  
"Oh yes? What exactly happened after I left ball?"  
"He, Courf, and Bahorel got up on stage and did the entire of the Sugarhill Gang's Rapper's Delight. In English, mind you. Quite impressive."  
"I didn't know any of them spoke English."  
"Courf does. Bahorel knows a little. And according to Grantaire, Rapper's Delight is the only English he knows, but he knows every line of it."  
Dressed, Enjolras leaned against his doorframe with arms folded. “He probably thinks I hate him now, anyway.”  
“You were pretty pissed off,” Combeferre had to concede. “But to be honest, I think he just thinks you’re back to normal. I think if anything he’s just worried about you.”  
Enjolras sighed. “Are you going to get coffee before class?”  
“At Musain, yes.”  
“Fine, I’ll come with you.”  
“Good. Thank you.”  
They walked around the corner and took the Metro from Tolbiac to Ledru-Rollin. They walked by the garden in Square Louis Majorelle, where roses reached out to them from between the slender iron railings. The filigree lettering on the sign over the bar reading Musain seemed much too unfamiliar to Enjolras for something he’d seen only a week ago - less than a week, in fact - but as soon as he stepped inside it was like nothing had changed, that he’d never taken his little break, and that he’d been here yesterday and everyone was normal.  
There was a general outcry of welcome when Enjolras came in, and he couldn't help but smile. He'd only been gone a few days, but his friends had missed him.  
"Enjolras, where've you been?" Called Feuilly from a seat near the back. "You vanished off the face of the earth for a while there."  
"You didn't answer my texts," Courfeyrac added.  
"My phone was broken," was Enjolras' weak excuse.  
“On your own and busy for four days without a phone? That’s likely.”  
"Come on, sit down - budge up, Jehan."  
Feeling better than he had in days, Enjolras sat. Everyone gathered around the big central table with a kind of group unity that was rarely seen in casual situations - usually they were more secular, dividing into smaller groups to socialise. Subtly, he checked around for Grantaire - he could see him sitting over by the piano, tapping at the keys and absorbed in a copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. A tall empty glass stood on the instrument next to him.  
"Grantaire, why so antisocial?" Called Jehan, who was sitting next to Enjolras. "Come on, sit over here!"  
Grantaire looked up with an automatic smile, and in response to encouragement stood and came to join them. Jehan moved over, making a space between himself and Enjolras.  
"Oh, I don't know if I should - " Grantaire began to protest.  
"Sit," Courfeyrac ordered, and Grantaire sat, squashed between Jehan and Enjolras and looking a little awkward. Perhaps he'd passed out again last night because he didn't seem very drunk this morning, despite the glass on the piano.  
"Morning," he said with a slightly nervous smile that made Enjolras' heart flutter.  
"Hi," he replied awkwardly.  
The group kept up general conversation. They talked about the state of Paris, the aftermath of the marches, the proximity of the exam season, the underground music scene. Several trays full of coffee were ordered. The day marched on, and soon Enjolras and a few others would have to go to afternoon lectures.  
A point was reached when some of the group were talking and Enjolras was not; he took this moment to steel himself and elbow Grantaire gently.  
"Hey," he said quietly. "Um, I'm sorry about Sunday. I was... Yeah. Sorry."  
Grantaire smiled slightly and shrugged. "Eh. I'm sorry too, I guess.”  
“You don’t need to apologize,” Enjolras said. “You spoke the truth. It’s my fault if I’m not ready to hear it.”  
Grantaire’s smile became more genuine. “Finally, you’re talking some sense,” he joked. “Seriously, though, have you been okay? You kinda vanished on us there.”  
“Everyone’s been asking me if I’m okay. Don’t I get to know if you’re okay? All of you, I mean. I’ve been fine. What about you?”  
“I don’t know, I don’t remember much.”  
Enjolras sighed. “Listen… I know I didn’t say… anything, on Sunday. Or since. It’s been days and I still don’t know what to say. But that doesn’t mean I don’t… I mean, it’s not that I don’t feel…”  
The door was thrown open and Marius came in, wide eyed. “Has Enjolras happened to show up today?” He called to the room at large.  
Enjolras stood. “I’m right here. What’s wrong?”  
“Turn on the TV,” Marius ordered the bartender as he hurried inside. “I was out with Cosette on Boulevard Voltaire, and I walked over here via Rue Chanzy. Look what’s happening, look.”  
Enjolras went to stand beside Marius in front of the TV as the 24hr local news channel flashed on. Rue Chanzy was smoky. People were running, some terrified, some with their faces covered with crudely tied cloths - many of these ones armed. Enjolras’ breath caught in his throat. Instantly, he was all business.  
“Who are they?” He asked sharply.  
“I doesn’t seem anyone knows,” Marius said. “They’ve announced no affiliation.”  
“Was there a specific target? One home, perhaps, or a block of flats, or a particular shop?”  
“I’m not sure. There seemed to be violence everywhere. From what I saw, though, the worst of the smoke seemed to be coming from the flats above that blue cafe.”  
“Next to the music shop.”  
“Yes.”  
Enjolras went to the table and pulled his bag onto his shoulder; everyone else was standing and collecting themselves as well. “What are the police doing?” He asked Marius.  
“When I was there, there were no police. It won’t be easy for them to get there, the traffic is in gridlock and the ends of the street are blocked by abandoned vehicles.”  
“Well, at least there’ll be us,” Enjolras said. “Arm yourselves. Go home if you have to, if you think you have time. We head for Rue Chanzy.”  
“‘Arm yourselves’?” Grantaire echoed as everyone made to leave. “Are you insane? What exactly are you expecting to arm yourselves with?”  
In lieu of a reply, Enjolras reached into his bag (which contained a folder, textbook and laptop he was now unlikely to use today) and innocently pulled out a handgun. Grantaire seemed to be the only person who was the least bit surprised.  
“Where the fuck did you get that?!” He cried.  
“I have a licence for it,” Enjolras defended.  
“What, a licence to shoot coke cans and birds? You’ll still get arrested for carrying it around!” Grantaire shook his head helplessly. “You fucking country-club boys. You’ve all got fucking rifles in your backpacks.”  
“I’d rather be arrested than shot.” He carefully loaded the gun, and turned to address the group, who were all looking to him. “Well,” he said. “It appears our time has come.”

They were gathered in the Square Louis Majorelle garden; the smoke had drifted this far already. They were well organised as a force, considering they were nothing but a ragtag bunch of students; Enjolras ran a tight ship. A good leader with good men always made an organised group.  
“Everyone is ready,” Courfeyrac told Enjolras.  
“Grantaire isn’t here,” Combeferre protested.  
“He doesn’t have to be,” Enjolras replied. “He has a right to stay safe and keep out of this. It’s not up to us what he does. Let’s just go, quickly.”  
“Enjolras,” Combeferre said softly, “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; he’d come if you asked. He isn’t afraid.”  
“And I’ll say this again: he shouldn’t have to come just because I want him to.”  
“Why not?” Courfeyrac said with a note of playfulness is his voice, slinging an arm around Combeferre’s shoulder. “I’m only here for the boy.”  
Combeferre rolled his eyes with a faint smile. “Please, you’re here for glory and honour and nothing else.”  
“But honestly, look at us,” Courfeyrac said to Enjolras, turning serious again. “We’re not useless, but none of us know anything about actual fights.”  
“I know about fighting.”  
“No, Enjolras, what you know about is war, not fighting. Waging war is what politicians do, with those big map tables full of little moving flags. The battles are dealt with by the boxers, brawlers and bar-fighters of the world. Not someone like you. Someone like…”  
“Grantaire,” Enjolras sighed.  
“He’s a tough guy and a good fighter, Enjolras. We could do with his help.”  
“Alright. I agree. Is he still in Musain? I don’t have a number for him.”  
“What are we talking about?” A voice asked beside Enjolras, and he turned with some surprise to see Grantaire standing there.  
“Grantaire?” He said.  
“Hello.”  
“You weren’t here a moment ago.”  
“Yeah, no shit.”  
“Where were you?”  
“I only live around the corner. I went home to arm myself, like you told us to.”  
“Arm yourself with what? With a stick?”  
Grantaire did indeed appear to be carrying a stick. “We used to practice with them for fencing in high school,” he explained, admiring it. “They’re heavier than the real blades, so when we actually came to using real ones they felt super light and we could move them extra fast.”  
“Why didn’t you just bring one of the real ones, then?”  
“Have you seen them? They’re basically just extra-thick plastic wire attached to a handle. You can bend them almost completely in half.”  
Enjolras shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t see how the stick is going to be much more useful than that anyway.”  
“Oh yeah?” He raised the stick and smacked Enjolras on the top of the head with it.  
“Ouch!”  
“See? And that was me being gentle, because I don’t want to knock you out before the fight. Or mess up your sweet hair.”  
“Fine, whatever. Keep the stick. We’re going.”  
And they went.  
The street had been blocked off at the end they approached by a sideways-parked car; it was a narrow, one-way lane. The streets were emptier than usual, apart from a couple of figures with obscured faces. The flats on one side of the street seemed to be on fire, with smoke billowing from the windows. Les Amis crouched behind the car and waited for Enjolras to assess the situation and give instructions; he peered over the top of the car. Grantaire, at his shoulder, peered too.  
“This car must be theirs,” Grantaire murmured to him. “And the one on the other end of the street. We should probably slash their tires so they can’t run away. Or something.”  
Enjolras nodded. “Good idea. Without getaway vehicles it won’t be hard to stall them until the police arrive.”  
“We can’t waste time stalling the attackers, there’s probably still people inside the flats. And what about the shops?”  
“We prioritise getting them out.”  
“The ones on fire?”  
“Dangerous, but we have to check. I’ll do that.”  
“Typical. Well, I suppose I’ll have to come with you, then. If, of course,” he added with a little joking bow to Enjolras, "you will permit it."  
“If you must. Don’t fuck it up.”  
“I’ll do my best.”  
Enjolras turned to the others. “How many do we have?”  
“Including you, eleven,” Combeferre told him.  
Enjolras did a bit of maths in his head. “Okay. Somebody can come with Grantaire and I into the burning flats, if anyone is willing to risk it; there’s no shame if nobody does, though.”  
“Listen to you, with your healthy grown-up attitude to risk and sacrifice,” Grantaire joked. “Our little honour-crazed martyr is becoming a big boy now.”  
Enjolras ignored him. “Four more go into the flats across the street; there’s no fire, but there are probably attackers inside, so be careful. Two get out into the street and do what you can with the attackers out here. Combeferre, Joly, I want you to stay somewhere safe and listen for our call, in case we need medical help. Decide who does what, quickly.”  
“I’ll run into the flames with you, Jolras,” Courfeyrac said. “Sounds like a laugh.”  
“You’re a brave man, Courfeyrac.”  
“And I’d love to run into a building full of terrorists and free some prisoners,” said Bahorel. “Who’s with me?”  
“I’ll be the brains of that operation,” Feuilly said.  
“Count me in,” Legle said.  
“Well, if you’re going, I’m going,” Jehan said bravely.  
“Guess that leaves me and Marius to be live bait,” Eponine said cheerfully.  
“The medics will be around here to help us, too,” Marius put in.  
“Must you leave us behind?” Combeferre said.  
“We don’t have time to argue,” Joly said. “But if anyone needs help, medical or otherwise, we’ll be here to tag in anywhere.”  
“Is everyone ready?” Enjolras said, clicking the safety off his gun. “I’m afraid there’s no time for speeches.”  
“Thank god,” Grantaire said.  
“Alright, let’s go. Good luck, everyone.”  
They spilled around the edges of the car and plunged into the battlefield. Enjolras vaulted the bonnet and ran for the burning building, Grantaire at his shoulder. The attackers barely seemed to notice them, three people running one way compared to eight running the other. The doors were hanging off the hinges, and the three men were straight inside.  
Nobody was left on the first floor; they'd all escaped while they could. This floor was a cafe, with disturbed tables and abandoned plates of food; they did a quick sweep, during which Grantaire picked up a wafer biscuit from somebody's coffee saucer. Enjolras gave him a pointed glare, but he just shrugged and ate it in one bite.  
The stairs were out back, behind the kitchen; it was pretty hot, and there was a slight glow coming from above.  
"We probably shouldn't go up there," Courfeyrac said, "but I feel like we're going to anyway."  
"The fire probably isn't bad," Enjolras reasoned.  
"What about the smoke? It'll have risen."  
"It's all going out of the window."  
"All of it?"  
"The top flat had Dormas," Grantaire said. "I think a lot of the smoke will be clearing."  
"The Dormas were open?"  
"Yes."  
"Then there must be someone up there to open them. Who would have their windows open in January otherwise? Wait - Grantaire, where are you going?"  
Grantaire was opening the back door. "Sorry, did you think I was leaving you?" He laughed. "I was going to look for a ladder."  
"Why?"  
"So we don't have to go up the stairs. Haven't you ever seen a fire rescue before? Come on, there's one right here by the shed. Not afraid of heights, are you, boys?"  
Outside in a scrappy little garden, Grantaire extended the ladder and leaned it up against the wall. It reached the window of the floor above, but it was never going to reach the top floor.  
"Hold this a minute," Grantaire said, pressing Enjolras' hands to the sides of the ladder. With a fairly impressive jump he started quickly up the ladder. At the top, he smashed the window in with his stick, and ducked as a puff of smoke billowed out; then, he peered inside.  
"We can get through," he called down, "if we're quick. Everyone take a deep breath."  
“Wait, no, you are not going in first,” Enjolras said. “Get back down here.”  
Grantaire looked over his shoulder. “Are you sure we have time?”  
Enjolras thought about it, then reluctantly shook his head. “No. Fine, you go on ahead, I’m coming. Courfeyrac,” he added, giving the ladder a shake to make sure it was stable, “see if the garden hose works and follow me. Maybe you can tame the flames.”  
And with that he scaled the ladder and climbed through the smashed window.  
The only way through was to run straight to the stairs; the heat and the dryness were searing. The smoke was slightly clearer now that the window was smashed. Squinting against the dry air, Enjolras peered through the glow of flames - which luckily seemed to be limited to wooden counters around the walls, the tile floor safe - to see Grantaire, one hand over his mouth, waiting for him at the foot of the stairs. He reached out an arm and, taking Enjolras’ hand, dragged him through the flames. Enjolras paused at the foot of the stairs to look for Courfeyrac as long as he could, but Grantaire pulled him up just as the familiar face appeared in the window. But, by the hiss of steam behind him, Enjolras guessed the hose did work.  
The upper floor was, as predicted, smoky but not life-threateningly so. In a corner, a family - the people who lived here, perhaps, or in the flat below - huddled close to the floor to avoid the worst of it, coughing slightly. When the men entered, they cried out, adults clutching the children closer.  
“It’s alright,” Enjolras said, trying for a strong voice but not being able to muster much in the smoky air. “We’re here to help you.”  
“Help us?” a fairly elderly woman echoed in a voice croaky from smoke.  
“Yes, Madame,” said Grantaire.  
“Who are you?” A middle-aged mother asked suspiciously.  
“Men of France, Madame,” Enjolras said, offering her a hand up. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”  
Grantaire went to help up the old woman, but she said, “Wait; Monsieur, will you take my grandson first?”  
“Your…?” Grantaire looked down as she unfolded a small baby from the protection of her scarf and offered it to him.  
“Uh, sure. Okay.” He took the baby and held it at arms’ length, under the armpits, squinting at it.  
“Take my mother,” the middle-aged woman said softly to Enjolras. “I’ll be alright. I’ll follow you.”  
“Jolras, will you take this baby?” Grantaire said, holding it out to him, still at arms’ length.  
Enjolras draped the older woman’s arm around his shoulder. “I have this lady, Grantaire; you take of him. Why are you holding him like he’s a burning candle? Learn to hold a child, man.”  
Grantaire drew the baby closer to him in what he hoped was a protective grip as they headed for the stairs. “Why should I be able to hold a baby? I wasn’t planning on having one myself. Why, were you? Because I feel like that’s something we should talk about first.”  
“Shut up, Grantaire. Courfeyrac, are you down there?”  
He appeared at the foot of the stairs. “Right here!”  
“Is it safe?”  
“It’s safer, I suppose. Do you have everyone?”  
“Yes. Help this lady here; Madame, you go first,” he urged the younger woman forward.  
“Enjolras, I hate to burst holes in your plan,” Grantaire said to him as she descended, “But how are we meant to carry a baby down a rickety ladder? I don’t think you’re meant to carry them in one hand.”  
“You can carry them in one hand.”  
“How?”  
“...I’m not sure.”  
“Why don’t we take it down the main stairs?” Grantaire suggested. “Out of the front of the cafe and back to the other side of the car. The old lady could do with avoiding the ladder, too.”  
“Hmm. What does it look like down there?”  
Grantaire went to the window. “I can’t see anyone on the streets. Wait, there’s Jehan. Well, he’ll do us no harm, will he? I think the others have the attackers distracted. If we’re quick, we can make it. Your call, though, of course.”  
Enjolras made a quick decision. “Alright. Let’s do it.”  
They went down the first set of the stairs into the still-slightly-on-fire middle flat. “Courfeyrac, we’re taking these two down the main stairs and across the street. Take the others down the back way and meet us behind the car on the other end of the street to where we came in. If you see anyone we know, tell them to cover us. Got it?”  
“Got it.”  
Enjolras turned to Grantaire. “Ready?”  
“Whenever you are.”  
“Alright. Let’s go.”  
They got back into the cafe, which was still empty. With a moment’s glance at each other by way of coordination, they gathered their rescued dependents close and made a break for it.  
Enjolras didn’t know if anyone tried to stop them; if they did, either they failed, or they were stopped by other Amis. Perhaps the path was simply clear. Enjolras wasn’t sure; he fixed his eyes on his destination and ran until he reached it. They got to the car, clambered around it and got to safety; quite a crowd of onlookers was forming, with a fair few cameras and reporters, but still no police that Enjolras could see.  
The elderly lady took Enjolras' hand and shook it with a warm, tearful smile as Grantaire handed her grandson back to her. "Thank you, Monsieur," she said and added to Grantaire, "and you, for saving my grandson. I have never seen such selflessness."  
"Only too happy, Madame," Grantaire said, as Courfeyrac came running with the younger woman. The two women hugged each other, the baby snuggled between them.  
"What now?" Courfeyrac asked.  
"The others," Enjolras said. "Where are they?"  
"Inside the other flats, I guess."  
"Draw them out," Enjolras ordered. "Them and the attackers. It's the only way we can get whoever is inside to safety. Take the fight away from them. Courf, will you relay that order?"  
"Yes, sir."  
"I'll go inside and work on getting the residents out. It should be easier with no fire."  
"I'll go with you," Grantaire said.  
Enjolras shook his head. "This time I think it would be best to go alone. Stay here and see that this family get to safety."  
"But -"  
"Don't argue, Grantaire. If the others come here, make sure Joly and Combeferre are safe, then feel free to join the fight. But be careful."  
"Fine," Grantaire conceded reluctantly. "Whatever you say."  
"Thank you." He turned and jumped up onto the bonnet of the car, looking to Courfeyrac. "Ready?"  
"Let's do this."  
"Right."  
"Enjolras!"  
He turned and looked back; Grantaire, at the front of the gathered crowd, held Enjolras' gun up to him. "Don't forget this," he said.  
Overcome all of a sudden by the whole situation, and especially by Grantaire's goodness in it - his loyalty and his unexpected bravery - Enjolras leaned down from the bonnet and kissed him, attempting to put all his gratitude and admiration into it without words. It could only be quick, but the hurry only magnified the intensity - a lot squeezed into a very short amount of time. Then, he pressed Grantaire's fingers closed around the gun, murmured, "Keep it for yourself," turned back to Courfeyrac, said, "Go!" And leapt back into the danger zone as cameras flashed behind him.  
Courfeyrac was true to his word; within a few minutes the rest of Les Amis, minus a couple, were out in the open, battling the faceless attackers. He vanished into the fray, leaving Enjolras alone to infiltrate the second building.  
The bottom floor was a shop, shelves overturned and stock littering the floor. Enjolras took care to clear a bit of a path as he went through, in case he or the trapped people needed an easy escape route. He found the stairs and made his way up to find a gathering of around ten people in an empty upper flat that looked more like a building site than a home, with bare plaster walls and nothing but tarp over the windows.  
When Enjolras entered the room, the people inside brandished tools and blunt objects, but relaxed when they saw his face was uncovered and his hands in the air.  
"Is everyone alright?" He asked the room at large.  
"Are you police?" A bearded man asked suspiciously.  
"No, Monsieur, but I am here to get you out. Now, is anyone hurt?"  
The crowd shook their heads.  
"Is there a back way out?" Enjolras continued.  
"Yes," the bearded man said, "there's a fire escape if we can get to the balcony upstairs."  
"Go," Enjolras said, "my friends are dealing with the attackers, and I'll cover your backs."  
"With what?" A woman asked scornfully.  
Enjolras looked down at his right hand, seeing the weapon he had ended up with in the confusion and smiling fondly to himself. Then he hefted it confidently in his hand and said, "With a stick."  
The crowd looked skeptical, but started to move anyway. Enjolras started to follow, and then he heard commotion downstairs. "Go!" He shouted to the people, "I'll cover you. Hurry!"  
The crowd ran up the stairs behind Enjolras, and at almost the same time two of the masked attackers burst into the flat. They paused to check around and see who was in here, which gave a well-prepared Enjolras a moment to swing the stick as hard as he could into the face of the first man. There was a crack and a howl of pain. He lifted the stick again as bought it down on top of the same man's head. He wasn't strong enough to knock him out, but hit with just about enough force to daze him and knock him to the ground.  
The next attacker came up behind him; he whirled around and raised the stick, but not fast enough. The man yanked the stick out of his hands and pulled it back as if to thrust it into Enjolras' face. Enjolras swung out of the way, but he had no way to defend himself, and he wouldn't run away. It was only a matter of time.  
There was a sudden gunshot; Enjolras heard the crowds outside scream distantly at the sound. For a moment Enjolras was sure the attacker must have shot him, and waited to feel pain and a rush of blood, but then the attacker collapsed to the floor, and standing behind him was the irrepressible Grantaire, followed by Courfeyrac.  
"What are you doing here?" Enjolras cried.  
"Couldn't leave you all on your own," Courfeyrac said, giving him a brief one-armed hug. "Are you alright? Where are the people?"  
"Gone, I hope," Enjolras replied. "Go after them, will you, Courf?"  
"The others might not be able to hold off the other attackers for long," Courfeyrac warned.  
"We'll be fine, just look after the others."  
Courfeyrac left upstairs with a nervous backward glance, leaving Grantaire and Enjolras to set up a defence in the middle flat.  
Grantaire kicked the still-conscious attacker that Enjolras had hit with the stick hard in the head, knocking him out. Then he held out a hand to Enjolras, who just looked at it, unsure what he was meant to do with it; hold it? Shake it? Grantaire cleared up this confusion by saying,"Give me my stick back. You're not strong enough to hurt anyone with it."  
"Well you haven't got steady enough hands to shoot a gun," Enjolras replied. The man on the floor was nursing a wound somewhere near his hip.  
"Swap," Grantaire said diplomatically, and they did.  
"Thanks for coming when you did," Enjolras said. "Although I'm still a little mad you disobeyed my orders."  
“Sorry, sir.”  
"Oh, don't."  
"Sorry."  
"Stop apologising!"  
"Shh," Grantaire said.  
"Don't 'shh' me -" Enjolras began, but Grantaire put a finger to his lips.  
"Do you hear that?" He asked quietly.  
Enjolras listened. "Someone's coming," he said.  
"Friend or foe?"  
"That's the question, isn't it? Get ready to defend yourself."  
Enjolras aimed his gun at the top of the stairs, and Grantaire brandished the stick in fencing stance. Footsteps began to sound on the stairs. Enjolras hoped it was friends.  
It was not.  
Six attackers made their way up. Enjolras shot the first, and Grantaire moved in to take the one beside him; by then, the others had moved to fill the room around them. The force of the first shot had sent Enjolras’ hand up towards to ceiling, so he brought it back down to rest in the palm of his left hand before directing the muzzle of the gun at his next target. As he began to squeeze the trigger, Grantaire moved into his line of fire, having dispatched his first attacker. Grantaire held the stick expertly in his hands, tapping his foe around the ears and catching his ankles, doing little damage but dealing well.  
Enjolras now trained his sights on an attacker behind the one Grantaire was fighting, and pulled the trigger more forcefully this time. He watched as this one fell to the floor: perfect shot. The sound of the gun momentarily distracted Grantaire’s opponent, and he took this opportunity to bring his stick whooshing round in a huge arc and crashing into the temple of his now unconscious opponent.  
Another man had crept up behind Enjolras and now tackled him; his shoulder collided with Enjolras’ hip and they both went crashing onto the ground. The impact had sent the gun skidding out of Enjolras’ hand, and both thrashed on the floor, trying to inflict some damage. Neither was succeeding; Enjolras stretched his fingers towards the space on the floor where he knew his gun sat. His opponent noticed this attempt and pushed away from Enjolras slightly as if to reach for it, too. This was all Enjolras needed; he brought his outstretched arm swiftly down towards the attacker’s sweaty face with all the force he could muster and his elbow connected. The attacker went limp and Enjolras breathed a sigh of relief.  
The sound of a gunshot shattered the feeling and Enjolras held his breath as he again waited for the pain of a bullet to sink in. When again it didn’t, he released the breath and rolled out from beneath the unconscious man, picking up his gun as he did so.  
Enjolras heard footsteps and two more attackers burst in and moved swiftly to opposite sides of the room; Grantaire backed up and joined Enjolras in the middle of the room. Both paused for a moment, glancing at each other; Grantaire had the audacity to wink, and then spun around Enjolras so they were back to back. Their attackers moved in and Enjolras could feel the muscles in Grantaire’s shoulders tense as he prepared to dispatch his opponent.  
Enjolras’ opponent didn’t have a gun, so he holstered his own and readied himself for the unarmed man’s attack. His opponent lunged for him, and he brought his left fist forward, towards the jaw of the attacker in a swift jabbing motion. It connected and Enjolras heard a crack but it didn’t come from his attacker. That would hurt later. The attacker perhaps assumed Enjolras was left-handed now, but he brought his stronger right arm up to land a punch in the middle of his opponent’s chin. His head snapped back and he fell the floor like a bag of bricks.  
Enjolras took a step back, tripped on a body behind him and went tumbling to the floor much like his ex-opponent. As he scrambled up he realised only one attacker remained; his gun was aimed at Grantaire, who was carefully placing his stick on the floor. Enjolras raised his own weapon and trained it directly at the stranger’s head but before he could even place his finger on the trigger a voice sounded behind him.  
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” It was the bastard who had tackled Enjolras earlier, not as unconscious as he’d thought.  
Enjolras slowly lowered his gun and turned. The man was holding his own gun now, and it was pointed directly at Enjolras’ head. Enjolras tossed his gun to the side and reluctantly placed his hands behind his head before backing towards his accomplice, Grantaire. He wouldn’t surrender to save his own life, but he had no right to risk Grantaire’s.  
The man lowered his gun slightly and Enjolras stole a sideways glance at Grantaire. He gave him a cocky smile but Enjolras knew it was forced; Grantaire would probably like nothing more than to drink his way out of this bad dream.  
A gunshot sounded, and Enjolras looked at Grantaire in alarm, before mentally checking himself and turning to his foe in an attempt to take advantage of the shock and shoot, but the man was already falling. Behind him, on the narrow landing of the stairs from below, stood Legle behind the barrel of a gun, and just behind him at his shoulder, Jehan.  
“Man,” Legle said, looking down at the fallen men with a look reminiscent of a schoolboy reminded he had homework, “If we don’t get arrested then these guys and their next of kin are going to sue the fuck out of us.”  
“If only you’d actually attended one or two of your law classes this year you might have been able to get us out of that lawsuit, Bossuet,” Jehan said, pushing past him into the flat. “What happened to the people who were trapped in here?”  
“They ran for it,” Enjolras told him. “Courfeyrac went with them.”  
“Shall I go and find him? See if they got out safely?”  
“Thank you, Jehan.”  
As Jehan went up the stairs to the balcony where the inhabitants of the flat had fled, Legle asked, “Are you guys okay?”  
Enjolras said, “Yes.”  
Grantaire said, in a tone of faint surprise, “Um, no.”  
As he spoke he stumbled almost comically, a few clumsy steps back, and as the others started towards him, fell roughly in Enjolras’ direction. Enjolras reached to catch him by the shoulders, but didn’t reach him in time; Legle managed to grab an arm, but it was but although it was enough to keep him upright it was not enough to stop him falling heavily on his arse on the floor. Enjolras dropped to his knees beside him as Legle gripped his left shoulder tight, keeping him sitting up.  
“I tried to fall dramatically into your arms,” Grantaire said faintly to Enjolras, “but it didn’t work out so well.”  
“Shh,” Enjolras said sharply. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Show me.”  
Grantaire obligingly lifted his hand away from his shoulder; it came away bloody. Underneath, his green jumper had been perforated neatly by a round bullet hole, as had his right shoulder somewhere just right of the collarbone. “Aw, look at that,” Grantaire said, looking down at the wound. “A proper hardcore gunshot wound. You bastards got me shot. I knew that would happen; did I not say that would happen? Ah, well, I guess a gunshot wound is pretty badass. Has anyone got their phone on them? I want a picture.”  
“This is no time for jokes, Grantaire,” Enjolras said, wrapping an arm around him to grip his left shoulder and relieving Legle of this task. “You need a doctor. Bossuet, go to the window and call for Combeferre; I don’t want to move him.”  
“A doctor?” Legle echoed. “It’s barely a flesh wound. Look at that piddly little bullet hole. Don’t want to move him, tch; I’ve hurt myself worse cutting up carrots.”  
“You lost a finger cutting up carrots, Bossuet,” Grantaire said with a grin.  
“Exactly.”  
“Legle, Combeferre! Now!” Snapped Enjolras.  
“Relax, Jolras,” Grantaire said. “I’ll be okay.” He patted the wound with a hand and screwed up his face with a groan. “Ahh, on second thoughts, I’m clearly dying.”  
“Don’t be so theatrical, you’re not dying,” Enjolras said. “Bossuet was right. It’s a flesh wound.”  
“Then why are you fussing? No, don’t answer that. Please, continue fussing. I like it. I should get shot more often. Did anyone ever tell you you look about twelve when you’re all worried?”  
By this time Legle had returned from the window; he gave Enjolras a reassuring nod.  
“No,” Enjolras said in answer to Grantaire’s question.  
“Well, you do. I suppose you’ve never been all that worried in front of us before.”  
“I’m not worried. I never worry. But please do stop making jokes; this is serious.”  
Grantaire instantly stopped grinning and nodded obligingly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to.”  
Footsteps clattered up the stairs and Joly appeared with the first aid kit he’d taken from the cafe across the road. “Combeferre is dealing with Eponine,” he explained breathlessly, crossing the room quickly and kneeling with them. “So you’ll have to make do with me, I’m afraid.”  
Enjolras squeezed his shoulder gratefully. “You’ll do nicely, thank you, Joly.”  
“Eponine?” Grantaire echoed, struggling to get to his knees and get up before being pressed back down by an angry Enjolras. “Will she be okay?”  
“I don’t know,” Joly said honestly, examining the wound. “But she’s with Ferre, so I’m optimistic.”  
“I bet she took the fall for Marius, didn’t she?” Grantaire predicted. “Hurt herself protecting him. That’s what happened, isn’t it?”  
“Probably.”  
“Why would she do that?” Enjolras asked, puzzled.  
Everyone paused to give him deadpan stares.  
“Try ‘because she’s obsessively in love with him’, genius,” said Legle.  
“Is she?”  
“You haven’t noticed?”  
“No.” Enjolras was seriously starting to question just how well he knew his friends; first Grantaire, now this.  
Jehan came back down the stairs. “They’re gone,” he announced. “I followed what I assumed was their route out and found them out with the crowd; there are police there now.”  
“Why aren’t the police in here?” Growled Enjolras.  
“Jolras, you’re holding a gun and surrounded by bodies,” Legle reasoned. “Be glad the police aren’t in here.”  
“They’re making their way,” Joly told them, not taking his eyes of the first aid kit he was busy with. “The police. They were helping the others in the streets when you called me. There’s hardly any of the attackers left now.”  
“Half of them are here,” Legle said. “And half of them are dead.”  
“Grantaire, it looks like you were shot with an extremely pathetic shotgun,” Joly announced. “The bullet hit absolutely no resistant tissues, and going by the size of this room it couldn’t have been fired from all that far back, and yet it still didn’t go through you.”  
“Fine, I get it,” Grantaire said. “We’re all agreed that I have the most pathetic bullet wound imaginable. But it’s still a bullet wound.”  
“I imagine it will probably get a lot less pathetic-looking when I remove said bullet,” Joly said. “I mean, it’ll probably bleed a lot. But don’t worry, it’ll be okay. We can stem a little bleeding. A pint of blood loss never hurt anyone.”  
“It kind of sounds like it might hurt someone,” Grantaire said. “Could you maybe not go poking around inside me? Not that I have anything against you, but y’know, you should at least buy me dinner first.”  
“Don’t you trust me?”  
“Well, no, not really. You’ve only been studying medicine for a year and a half.”  
“Hey, how hard can pulling a bullet out be?”  
Grantaire looked at Enjolras. “Please get this man away from me.”  
Enjolras chuckled in spite of himself, adjusting his arm around him slightly and squeezing his unhurt shoulder comfortingly. “He’s fine, Grantaire. Stay still and let him do his job.”  
“He doesn’t have a job!” Grantaire slung his uninjured arm over his eyes, burying his face in the crook of his own elbow. “Man, why can’t I be sitting by a pool in Ibiza right now?”  
Joly, with a nasty looking pair of tweezers in one gloved hand and a wad of gauze in the other, gave Enjolras a pointed look. Enjolras nodded and tightened his grip on Grantaire.  
“I’ll tell you what,” he said to Grantaire in the most intimate tone he could muster - he was used to addressing crowds rather than one person - “As soon as all this is over, we’ll find the nearest pool and have an all-day pool party. For you, on me. Well, I mean, you know, after your bandages are off. You’re not meant to get them wet, right, Joly?”  
Grantaire laughed, and then groaned as the movement irritated his shoulder. Joly quickly snatched his tweezers away and glared at Enjolras for making him move.  
“Enjolras,” Grantaire said, “that was possibly the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me and then immediately ruined.”  
“I’m trying my best. Now stay still. And quiet.”  
Grantaire nodded and pressed his lips together firmly.  
Joly drew his hand back triumphantly, holding a tiny piece of metal between his tweezers. “Ha!” He cried. “I kick ass at real-life Operation.”  
“I feel so safe,” Grantaire mumbled weakly.  
Joly dropped the bullet onto the lid of his first aid kit, which it hit with a faint clack, and pressed the gauze against the wound, which had begun to bleed more profusely now. “Grantaire, you haven’t lost enough blood to be this weak,” he said. “Did you not eat breakfast?”  
“Breakfast? I had some kind of salad. A fruit salad, maybe. Something fruity. Mostly grapes? No, entirely grapes. It was wine! I had wine for breakfast.”  
“Grantaire,” Enjolras sighed.  
“What? Fuck you, I’m an artist. I’m allowed to be drunk and unstable.”  
“Guys,” Jehan said from the back of the room, where he was watching the others out of the window, “I think it’s all over.”  
“It is?” Legle said.  
“Yeah. The police are taking control. The crowds are kind of everywhere now. There’s an ambulance.”  
“An ambulance?” Echoed Joly. “Excellent. Guys, help me get Grantaire up. Let’s wrap things up here.”  
Legle clapped Enjolras’ shoulder with a grin. “We did something great, guys. You did something great.”  
“We saved lives,” Enjolras said, feeling pride swell in his chest, so much it almost felt like his throat was closing up. “You are the best, bravest and most incredible friends a man could wish for. I could be nothing without you.”  
“We love you too, Enjolras,” Grantaire mumbled weakly.  
“Well,” Legle said bracingly, “Time to face the press, then. Your public awaits, Jolras.”  
Enjolras stopped to look out of the window at the rabble of people - police, paramedics, civilians, arrested attackers, reporters - and his own men, somehow standing out even in the crowd. He looked back around at the men with him, at Grantaire, smiling at him despite everything. Feeling unfathomably peaceful, he put an arm around him and went out to make his statement.

Grantaire woke up vaguely uncomfortable but very well rested, and kept his eyes closed for several long seconds. Maybe minutes. The sleep had been long but natural. He hadn’t passed out, as it had transpired, or been given anything except painkillers, and he hadn’t needed any kind of surgery; the doctor had prescribed ‘a bit of a transfusion’ to get his blood pressure back up, then kicked everyone out to give it to him and told him they wanted to keep him under observation for the night. Apparently Joly had done a good job on him; his supervising doctor had praised him pretty vociferously. That was about all Grantaire had heard; finally the injury and the drama and the adrenaline and the hangover had caught up with him, and he fell asleep within minutes of lying down and stayed that way for fourteen hours. It was possibly the most restful and least alcohol-induced sleep he’d had since starting uni a year and a half ago.  
At length he opened his eyes to see a clean white ceiling overhead. With a long sigh, he turned over to his left to see if anyone had been allowed back into his room.  
Feuilly was sitting in the one of the chairs beside him, reading a newspaper. Nobody else; perhaps he was only allowed one or two people in the room at a time. He felt a slight pang of disappointment, but he supposed he should be glad anyone had come to keep him company while he slept.  
“Hey,” Grantaire said, his voice croaky from disuse.  
Feuilly looked up, and sighed. “Really? You wake up now? It had to be now. That is so typical. That’s so unfortunate.”  
“Good to see you too, Feuilly.”  
Feuilly smiled. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m glad you’re okay. But I get that I’m probably not the person you wanted to see here. Don’t worry, though, he’s been here; he’s been here all night. He just went to get some food and left me to keep an eye on you. You literally woke up in the ten minutes he wasn’t here out of the fourteen hours he was. He’s not going to be happy. He wanted to be here when you woke up.”  
“I do so hate to disappoint him,” Grantaire said, feeling a wild burst of happiness flicker in his chest.  
“Not as much as he’ll hate to have disappointed you. Look, he even left you this dumb little note in case you woke up.”  
The note was tucked under the glass of water on the bedside table; it read simply: R - gone for coffee + food, back soon - E x  
Grantaire snorted. “You told me that already. What’s the point of this?”  
“I don’t know, but he rewrote it about eight times with and without the x on the end so it’s probably significant.”  
“I see. What a complete idiot.”  
“Mm.”  
The door to the room opened gently and suddenly, there was Enjolras. He must have made it home to change at some point because he didn’t look as battered as he had yesterday; he was still wearing essentially the same collection of clothes he always wore, though, with the addition of a scarf as if it had been a particularly cold day. He was carrying a cardboard cup and a paper-wrapped pastry, and when he saw Grantaire was awake he stood frozen in surprise for second before dropping the pastry on the end of the bed and rushing to kneel beside him. Feuilly diligently removed the cup of hot coffee from his hand before he threw that aside, too.  
“Grantaire!” Enjolras exclaimed. “You’re awake - you slept for fourteen hours! How are you feeling?”  
“Calm down, I’m fine. We had this discussion yesterday, dude. Flesh wound. What about you? Let's see your damage.”  
Enjolras held up his left hand, where two of his fingers were bound together with some bandage. "I broke a finger punching someone," he said.  
"Hardcore."  
“I’m gonna leave you two alone now,” Feuilly said, standing up. “I’ll leave your coffee on the table, Enjolras.”  
Enjolras ignored him. “The doctor says they’re happy to discharge you today,” he told Grantaire. “Joly did a good job.”  
“Enjolras,” Feuilly said, slightly louder than before. Enjolras looked around at him. “Bye,” he said.  
“Yeah, see ya,” said Enjolras vaguely before turning back to Grantaire. Feuilly rolled his eyes and left. “We got a grilling from the police yesterday,” Enjolras said, “but there’s unlikely to be much of a case against us. Marius thinks we have a solid self defense case, and since half the country is clamouring for us to get medals, no jury is going to convict us. The attackers were terrorist-affiliated, by the way. Those that survived are going away, of course. Not everyone is entirely happy about the ones that didn’t, but sometimes such atrocities are necessary.”  
“Wait, half the country clamouring?” Grantaire echoed. “How do half the country know?”  
“Oh, you didn’t see the newspapers.” Enjolras actually blushed. “Do you want to?”  
“Of course.”  
“Okay,” Enjolras said with slight trepidation, then reached behind him and handed Feuilly’s abandoned newspaper to him.  
On the front cover was a dramatic photograph from yesterday; a photograph featuring Enjolras, and Courfeyrac, and Grantaire, and a car. Specifically, showing Enjolras and Courfeyrac standing on the car, and Enjolras leaning down to kiss Grantaire. In the background, a French flag hung from somebody’s window in a symbolic twist of coincidence. The image could have been staged, it was so perfectly composed.  
“They put this on the cover?!” Grantaire exclaimed. “Don’t they have to ask permission for that?”  
“They did!” Enjolras cried helplessly. “They just said it was a photo of some of us, they didn’t say which one! So I said yes!”  
Grantaire laughed. “Well, I never thought this would be how my fifteen minutes of fame happened,” he said, studying the picture before beginning to read the article: it began - 'An emotional moment, captured in this iconic image, punctuated the chaos on Rue Chanzy yesterday as heroic civilians attempted to free trapped residents during a violent terror attack.' From here, the report described the events fairly accurately, and ended with a statement from Enjolras, which started out proud and rhetoric, then seemed to grow more tired as he did, and finally ended with a bathetic, 'and now if you don’t mind, I’d like to head home and have a shower.'  
“Good speech,” Grantaire commented.  
“Thanks. I have another interview at five today. They wanted a cover shoot. Everyone’s been asking for statements and photos. At first I told them to fuck off and find someone who actually is oppressed to talk about oppression in their ‘special reports’ - but then I thought, why not use my privilege to get the message out to prejudiced people who won’t listen to anyone who isn’t a rich white man?”  
“Good call.”  
“Besides, I managed to throw in a touch of diversity - I got them to talk to Eponine as well. Well, once she’s out of intensive care.”  
“Eponine is in intensive care?” Grantaire exclaimed, scrambling into a sitting position and feeling a stab of pain through his shoulder.  
Enjolras pushed him back down onto the pillow with a sharp “Stay still. Eponine is fine, Combeferre worked wonders and her emergency surgery went fine. You were right, she did take a bullet for Marius. How did you know about her and him?”  
“Come on. She and I were in the ‘my life revolves around a hot student activist’ club together.”  
“There’s a club for that?”  
Grantaire raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, check out our flyers in the lecture theatres. No, Enjolras, that was a metaphor; I used it for dramatic effect. You’re a speechmaker, right?”  
Enjolras blushed again. “Of course. I see.”  
There was a moment of pregnant silence.  
“Listen,” Enjolras began slowly, “I’m not sure I thanked you yesterday. For coming and fighting with us. For the sacrifice you made. Just for everything. And if I did thank you, I didn’t thank you enough. So, thank you, Grantaire.”  
Grantaire shrugged. “What can I say? It just sort of happened. I couldn’t let you go out there and get yourself killed all on your own, could I?”  
“You did it for me?”  
“Well, I also did kind of see the moral obligation to save innocent lives, of course. But yes, I suppose, I mostly did it for you.”  
“Why?” Enjolras asked, his eyes wide and uncharacteristically childish.  
“You know why,” Grantaire replied gently. “What are you still doing kneeling there? Pull up a chair, why don’t you?”  
“Yeah.” Enjolras dragged a chair as close to the bed as it would go. “So, uh, about what you said the other night…”  
“You don’t have to say anything.”  
“Well, I want to.” He paused for a moment, staring at nothing in particular as if gathering his thoughts, before beginning.  
“I’m much too new to all of this to sit here and just say ‘I love you’,” He said. “I feel like that would be impulsive, and that I don’t know well enough what love really is to go throwing the word around recklessly.”  
Grantaire was only slightly disappointed; he smiled understandingly and gave a fond roll of the eyes. “Of course. You’re too much a fighter and not enough a lover to say something without fully understanding what it is you’re saying. And it’s not like you’ve had time to think about it.”  
“Not as much time as you, but I have had a little.”  
“And I suppose you’ve spent all the time you’ve had since friday thinking about nothing but me?” Grantaire said with a grin.  
“Well, maybe not. But maybe I’ve started getting my head together and figuring things out in the last fourteen sleepless hours in a dark room.”  
“Maybe.”  
“Anyway, just because I’m not saying those exact words doesn’t mean I haven’t got plenty of other nice things to say.”  
Grantaire raised an eyebrow. “Really? But of course, you’re always the king of handing out compliments and nice things, especially to me.”  
Enjolras had to chuckle at that. “Stop it. This time I really do have nice things to say, and I’ll thank you not to interrupt this particular speech of mine, not this time.”  
“I’ll try.”  
“Right.” Enjolras looked down at his hands where they were clasped together in his lap. “...It wasn’t so long ago I thought I hated you…”  
“From where I was standing it seems like you did hate me.”  
“Don’t interrupt! I don’t think I did. I think I thought I did, because I wanted to, but I don’t think I really did. I think I was just defensive of my ideas, and angry at your rejection of them; if I really had disdained you all this time, you never would have got to me. I never would have cared what you thought of my policies. But you always managed to get under my skin, and I think my brain misinterpreted why that was, and threw out hate in it’s confusion, almost as a defence against the truth. The truth being that I didn’t hate you at all, and that maybe I did in fact see, just as you said, that you were a strange kind of part of me, like we were two sides to a coin, and I was scared that I saw nothing of myself in you.”  
“Okay, so I say ‘I love you’ and you say ‘I don’t hate you’. This is really moving.”  
“I haven’t got to the nice stuff yet, I was just clearing things up. The nice stuff is this.” He looked at Grantaire through his lashes, smiling warmly. “That you give me hope. That I can always count on you to believe in me, even though you take care to believe in nothing. That even in the worst of times, you’re funny, and that’s beyond me. That you’re too humble. That you teach me new things every day, and I could never be the man I am now without you challenging me. That in my eyes at least, you’re the better-looking one here. That before I met you, I didn’t even think I could feel some of the things I feel now. That whatever you think, you matter just as much as I do, and to me, a lot more. That you've meant worlds to me these past few days. That you have a place in my heart no-one else could fill. That I’m honoured to have a place in yours.”  
Grantaire stared at him in amazement; with every line he’d felt his stomach turn over, and it felt like it had just done a series of somersaults in quick succession. A dizzying feeling. “So you can’t say you love me, but you can spend a good minute long-windedly defining love and then saying that’s how you feel?” He said, feeling the need to tone down the intensity a little despite the pounding of his heart somewhere near the base of his throat. “That’s cheating, dude.”  
Enjolras grinned charmingly. “Sometimes I’m able to find loopholes in my own rules.”  
Softly, and in a more serious tone, Grantaire turned the conversation back to where it should be: “I really mean something to you?”  
“A great deal.”  
“I have a real place in your heart?”  
“Absolutely.”  
He hesitated, and asked with quiet trepidation for confirmation on the point that had touched him the most, the point he had most trouble believing Enjolras had actually made: “You’re really honoured to have me?”  
“Confused, but definitely honoured, yes.”  
“Well, then,” Grantaire whispered, half to himself. “How about that.”  
“How about that indeed,” Enjolras agreed with a smile.  
After taking a moment to compose himself (but still with less steady a voice than he would have liked), Grantaire said, “I kind of want to lean over to kiss you, but I’m afraid you’ll just push me down again and tell me to stay still.”  
Enjolras shrugged. “Well, it is only a flesh wound. But you probably should stay still until the doctor comes.”  
“Yes, sir,” Grantaire consented sulkily.  
Enjolras shifted from his chair to sit on the edge of the bed. “I don’t make the rules,” he said.  
“Yes you do.”  
“You’re right, yes I do. So you stay still while I kiss you.”  
And Grantaire tried to. He really did. But hey, sometimes if you’re going to do something, you might as well do it right; so he buried his fingers in Enjolras' jacket, sighed warmly against his lips, and the morning simply flew by. 

 

Bonus scene: I think 

A Month or Two or Three Later  
Eponine looked up from her book as the door to Musain opened; it was about nine o'clock, later than Grantaire and Enjolras usually arrived. Usually, if they were coming, they’d be there around five or six; otherwise they were probably not coming at all. Not that that happened very often. Enjolras liked his talk too much to avoid spending a lot of time among friends, and Grantaire liked his drink too much to avoid the bar. Not that he was drinking quite so much these days. Apparently he’d finally found something else worth doing with his time.  
"You two are late," called Bahorel from the next table over, voicing Eponine's thoughts before she could. "We thought you weren't coming tonight. What happened?"  
"Maybe we missed you all too much to skip an evening with you," Grantaire said cheerfully.  
"I doubt it. What's the real reason?"  
"Fort collapsed! Poor thing. I've had it for years. Years of work, gone! It was tragic!"  
Combeferre raised an eyebrow. "You have a fort?"  
"We do not have a fort," Enjolras clarified. "He has a fort. I have an ordinary grown-up's apartment."  
"Hey, don't disown the fort, or I'll bar you from entering it."  
Enjolras fixed him with a trademark thunderous stare. "Oh, will you?" He asked imperiously.  
Grantaire back-pedaled hastily. "No. Of course not. I don't know why I said that. What am I talking about? I'm so stupid. Don't listen to me."  
"Mm. Better."  
"What's he got over you to make you grovel like that?" Eponine asked Grantaire, slipping off her bar stool and coming to sit with the others.  
"Nothing,” Grantaire replied with unconvincing innocence as they went to sit down, Enjolras already talking to someone else about something a lot more serious. “I love him. That’s all. Is that so hard to believe?”  
“Really, though.”  
“Fine. He has my credit card number and knowledge of some intimate tattoos.”  
Eponine laughed. “I can see exactly who’s wearing the trousers in this relationship.”  
“Hey, it’s not like that. We’re modern men. We have a relationship based on equality, without assignment of roles or manipulation of trust.”  
“Really?”  
“Of course not, look at him; he could tell me to go jump off a cliff and I’d probably not even question it.” He turned to his left, where Enjolras was sitting talking to Feuilly across the table, and draped his arm over the back of his chair. “Right?” He said to him.  
“Hm? What?” Enjolras replied vaguely.  
“Oh, nothing. Just saying how you could pretty much tell me to go play in the traffic and I would.”  
“That’s vaguely terrifying and a little unhealthy. But thank you, I guess.”  
“Would you do it if I told you to go play in the traffic?” Grantaire asked with a grin, clearly joking.  
Enjolras grinned back, tilting his head to lean against Grantaire’s arm on the back of his chair and looking up at him from there. “Would it make you feel better about yourself if I said yes?”  
“Yes.”  
“Well then. Sure, why not. But I’m struggling to see why that would happen. I need more information. What are the stakes here? Why must I play in the traffic? What will you gain from it? If I don’t, will you or your peace of mind be endangered in some way?”  
“My peace of mind would probably be more endangered if you were playing in traffic.”  
“Ah, so it’s pointless then.”  
“The point is that you’re not meant to question it. You’re just meant to do anything I ask.”  
“That would be supremely stupid. You ask some ridiculous things. The other day you asked if I would buy you one hundred metres worth of strawberry laces so you could build a sprinting track that allowed you to replace calories as you lost them.”  
“And I’m very upset that you said no! Remember that one time you said, 'come fight armed terrorists with a stick with me' and I totally didn’t say no?”  
“You’re never going to let that slide, are you?”  
“You still owe me for the gunshot wound. And hey, what can you do to pay me back? You have no skills. You have no art. All that’s left is for you to agree to put yourself in a pointlessly dangerous situation for me just because I said so.”  
“I already said I would, now leave me alone, I was in the middle of a grown-up conversation.”  
“Sorry. Love you.”  
“Stop apologising for everything. Love you too.” And he turned back to his conversation.  
“Well,” said Grantaire to Eponine, “What were we talking about?”  
Eponine raised an eyebrow at him. “R, did you just sit next to me so you’d have someone to talk to while the boy is making speeches?”  
“Of course not. You’re still the main bae, Ponine; this guy’s just a side chick.”  
“Sure, sure. So how come I’m all squished on the end here, huh? Hey, side ho - ” She called across Grantaire to Enjolras, “budge up, will you? You’re hogging the table. And Grantaire.”  
Enjolras looked surprised, but said, “I’m sorry, are you cramped?” and shifted his chair over.  
“Aww, honey, I was just kidding. But thank you.” She moved her chair across too and said to Grantaire, “he’s adorable.”  
“I’m glad you approve.”  
Enjolras got up from his chair. “Move,” he told Grantaire, poking his shoulder with a finger to indicate he wanted to get past.  
“What’s the magic word?” Grantaire replied annoyingly.  
Enjolras just sighed, climbed over him and went to the bar to get a drink. “I don’t suppose you want anything, then?” He said over his shoulder to Grantaire.  
“Scotch, please?” He replied with his most winning innocent smile. Enjolras just made a noncommittal noise and turned back to the bartender.  
“You can’t push that one very far, can you?” Eponine commented.  
“Well, it’s been like two, three months and he’s still with me, so apparently I can push him pretty far. As long as I immediately apologise after each push.”  
“‘I immediately apologise after each push’: name of your sex tape.”  
“Damn, I missed that. How many points up are you on me in the sex-tape-names game now?”  
“Too many. You say a lot of stupid stuff.”  
“I don’t know what we’re talking about,” Enjolras said as he returned, “but I agree, he does say a lot of stupid stuff.”  
He sat down heavily on top of Grantaire as if he wasn’t even there, and Grantaire protested weakly with a faint, “Ow…”  
“What was it you were saying, Ferre?” Enjolras continued his previous conversation as if nothing had happened.  
“You’re very heavy,” Grantaire continued to protest feebly, but Combeferre replied and Enjolras ignored him. Beside Combeferre, Courfeyrac grinned at Grantaire across the table, as if he was delighted to see someone else suffer as he had suffered. Grantaire gave him the finger and hauled Enjolras into his own vacant chair.  
"Nearly graduation time for you guys, then?" Eponine asked.  
"Yeah, right," Grantaire said. "We have another year. We're not out of it yet."  
"Any plans for after that?"  
"Aside enjoying sweet, sweet freedom? Not really. Paint some more. Hope I get by. Maybe freeload off my boyfriend for a while."  
"We should buy this place," Courfeyrac suggested. "Grantaire and I could do the books, we're business people. The law people can solicit the purchase. Eponine, you could tend the bar."  
"Fuck that," Eponine said, "I was on the cover of magazines a month ago. I have bigger prospects than bartending, thank you very much. Eponine is going places." And to some extent, she was. Things had certainly looked up for her recently. She'd got a much better job, for starters, and moved into a nicer apartment with a couple of friends.  
"Buying a bar sounds good," Grantaire agreed. "As long as I still get time to paint. But if we can afford a bar, then we can afford a boat. We ought to get a boat instead."  
"You could say you were on board for buying a boat," Grantaire said.  
"Not if you're going to make bad puns."  
"I like puns. Hey Eponine, what do you call a dog that sells medicines?"  
"I don't know if I would want to co-own a boat with Enjolras," Courfeyrac said, ignoring him. "He'd turn it into the next Arctic Sunrise and take us around the ice caps to harass oil explorers, and we'd never see any sun."  
"We could harass oil explorers in the tropics, too," Enjolras conceded.  
“Sounds like a fair deal,” Grantaire agreed.  
“Buying the bar sounds like more of a sound financial decision,” Combeferre said.  
“It could bring in some money to support our other endeavours,” Enjolras put in.  
“So it’s a plan,” Grantaire said, lifting his glass as if to make a toast. “After we’ve served our time, we buy the bar together and use the profits to support all our stupid impossible dreams!”  
Everyone agreed loudly and clinked their glasses together, and the talk turned back to more immediate matters. After all, students never liked to think about the future too much, no matter how optimistically. There were wrongs to be righted now, and that meant Les Amis were going to be busy.

\-------------------

Thanks for reading! Like I said it's my first fic, so let me know what you think in the comments!


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